Modernized Elevators Unveiled at Busy NYC Subway Station

Forte Construction Corp., based on Long Island, NY, with a NYC office, on August 4 announced successful completion of a two-elevator modernization at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) 66th Street-Lincoln Center 1 subway station on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Part of larger accessibility upgrades across the MTA network, the project, a joint venture with Gramercy Group, Inc., saw both the uptown and downtown elevators replaced simultaneously, wrapping up at the end of June 2025. Hundreds of hours were spent working ’round the clock to fully replace cabs and associated equipment, shafts and pits, along with two new elevator entrance canopies at street level. Workers faced an exceptional challenge in modernizing the 10-x-12-ft machine rooms that were significantly smaller than those in most subway stations. To make them code compliant, workers reconfigured both machine rooms for mechanical replacements and proper ventilation. According to MTA, the 66^th Street-Lincoln Center station is the system’s 58^th busiest, serving 4.7 million riders in 2023, an 18.8% increase from the prior year.