In Plain View And Still Obscure

I was walking between two meetings in the Bronx yesterday and came across a random and interesting structure:

The neighborhood (the lower part of the Grand Concourse, at the corner of 149th Street) is Mott Haven, but I had not heard of Mott Avenue before. A few moments of googling turned up that Mott Avenue was a north-south street subsumed into the expanded Grand Concourse in the 1920s. A few moments more and the mystery was solved: it’s the original and abandoned entrance to the still-extant 149th Street/Grand Concourse station on the IRT 2 and 5 lines. I suspect the only reason it’s still there is that it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s nice that it’s standing, but it’s a bit forlorn. Reuse would be nice.