uilt in 1908, the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Brooklyn has been long overdue for a facelift. Constructors have stripped it down to the bare bones, and now are building it back up again in an effort designed to make it safer and to create a strong transportation hub outside of Manhattan. It’s no small project.

The construction to renovate the Atlantic Avenue station began in March 2000 at an estimated cost of $105 million, according to Deborah Holmore at the New York Transit Authority. “The only thing that threw us off was the [attack on] the World Trade Center,” says Holmore. “In fact, we might have completed early if not for that.” Some construction crews were pulled off the project to help restore subway service in downtown Manhattan, and this put the restoration project behind schedule. Despite those setbacks, however, the Atlantic Avenue station is supposed to be completed no later than March 2004.

It's a late night of work underground for Henry Wilson and Charles Paylor, construction flagmen for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. They are keeping a close eye on the crew of contractors who are installing rows of new fluorescent lamps above the subway platform for the 4 and 5 lines, replacing the temporary lights that used to hang from support beams. Wilson and Paylor slowly follow the contractors as they install the lights, from the farthest edge to the center. If a train is coming, and the contractors are standing on ladders, they must warn them immediately so that the contractors will know to get down. Because of the reverberations throughout the wooden floor, it is not safe for them to be on a ladder when trains rumble through the station. Flagmen also keep an eye out for passengers who are either too close to the contractors or too close to the platform edge. They make sure riders find safe passages along the edge while skirting the yellow tape surrounding the contractor’s work area.

In addition to platform restoration, the Atlantic Avenue subway station will boast eight new elevators and one escalator to improve handicap access, wider passageways between subway lines and the Long Island Railroad, and a refurbished historic kiosk that sits on a traffic island, surrounded by Flatbush, Atlantic, and Fourth Avenues, above the station. The kiosk, which has currently been moved off-site, was once a subway entrance and a newsstand. Though boarded up in the 1990’s, it remains a national historic landmark that needed to be incorporated into the renovation designs. Part of the kiosk’s renovation will include turning it into a skylight, something that both Wilson and Paylor are very excited about. “I’m not exactly sure where it will be,” Wilson says. “But you’ll be able to see down into the subways from above. This place has been neglected for a long time,” says Wilson. “Two more years and you won’t even recognize the place.”