Saturday Morning in Downtown Brooklyn: The Atlantic Terminal LIRR Entrance Is Uncovered

We were on our way to teach at Brooklyn College this morning, walking from the G train station at Fulton and Lafayette to the Atlantic Terminal at 7:30 a.m. when we saw them finally taking down the wooden barriers behind which the new Long Island Rail Road terminal entrance construction has been going on for over three years.

On Hanson Place some workers were using a blowtorch (we don't know our tools, really) to do other stuff, but they were definitely tearing down the barriers so passersby could see the work.

And we arrived at an opportune time, because construction workers had just opened, for the first time in years, the pathway from the current entrance (by the Starbucks) that goes around the new curved terminal entrance when they closed the sidewalk near Flatbush Avenue.

There was still fencing between us and the terminal and most of the windows had the blinds drawn but we, along with another oldtimer and a young couple were apparently the first ones to get to peek inside.

"It looks like a museum," said the older guy on our left as we looked in. "It's beautiful. Maybe they overdid it, but it's about time it's done."


After our class and some conferences and lunch at the Junction, we were back around 1 p.m. and all the boards had been taken down and we got a good view from Ashland Place, across from the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building or whatever it's called now.

The workers were still doing stuff, and foot and street traffic was slow and diverted, but it looks like the LIRR entrance should be open to the public soon and it looks as if it will be beautiful.

Here's an artist's rendering of the almost-completed Atlantic Terminal LIRR entrance:

Anyway, as we made our way to Lafayette Avenue past BAM back to the G train to Williamsburg, everything seemed normal, with the usual aquatic creatures hanging around the street.