Gallery Place (WMATA station)

Gallery Place Chinatown Washington Metro station
Station statistics
Address	630 H Street NW Washington, D.C. 20001
Lines	Red Line   Green Line   Yellow Line
Connections	Metrobus DC Circulator
Structure	Underground
Levels	2
Platforms	2 side platforms (upper level) 1 island platform (lower level)
Tracks	4 (2 per level)
Other information
Opened	December 15, 1976; 34 years ago (December 15, 1976)
Accessible
Code	B01 (upper level) F01 (lower level)
Owned by	Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Formerly	Gallery Place (1976-1986) Gallery Place–Chinatown (1986-2011)
Traffic
Passengers (2010)	10.656 million[1]
Services
Preceding station   Washington Metro   Following station Metro Center toward Shady Grove Red Line Judiciary Square toward Glenmont Archives toward Branch Avenue Green Line Mount Vernon Square toward Greenbelt Archives toward Huntington Yellow Line Mount Vernon Square toward Fort Totten

Gallery Place is a Washington Metro station in Washington, D.C., on the Green, Red and Yellow Lines. It is a transfer station between the Red Line on the upper level and the other two lines on the lower level.

Location

Gallery Place is located in Northwest Washington, with entrances at 7th and F, 7th and H, and 9th and G Streets. The station's only street elevator is north of F Street on the west side of 7th Street.

The station, which is beneath the Verizon Center, serves that arena and the surrounding Chinatown and Penn Quarter neighborhoods in downtown Washington. The station is located very close to Metro Center, such that the lights of one are visible down the tunnel from the other.

Notable places nearby

• Calvary Baptist Church
• Ford's Theater
• International Spy Museum
• J. Edgar Hoover Building (headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation)
• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (main branch of the DC Public Library)
• National Building Museum
• National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial
• National Portrait Gallery
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Verizon Center (home of the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, Washington Mystics, and Georgetown Hoyas)
• Washington Convention Center
• Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

History

Service began on December 15, 1976, as part of the original Red Line that ran from Farragut North to Rhode Island Avenue–Brentwood. The opening of the station was delayed by a court order over lack of handicapped access (it was originally supposed to open with the rest of the first stations on March 27, 1976). WMATA provided assurance that such access would be available by June 1, 1977.

Yellow Line service began on April 30, 1983, adding service to the Pentagon and National Airport. Green Line service began in 1991, adding service (at the time) to [[U Street (WMATA station)|U Street] and Anacostia.

Originally named "Gallery Place" after the nearby National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Chinatown" was added to the station name in 1986 (although the station's signage was not replaced until 1990^{[citation needed]}) and in 2000, a large Chinese-style fan, entitled The Glory of the Chinese Descendants, was installed over the 7th and H Street entrance.^[2] The station reverted to its original name, "Gallery Place", on November 3, 2011, with "Chinatown" listed as a subtitle.^[3]

This station has been a testing ground for new features in Metro stations. In 1993, the station was one of the first Metro station to receive tactile edging on its platforms. Since 2004, the station has been the site of testing for new signage. As a result, there is far more signage in this station than most others, including lighted signs, as well as signage that isn't found anywhere else in the system. In 2007, red LEDs were tested for the platform edge lights on the upper level. Orange LEDs were tested at the platform edge on the lower level, before being replaced by red LEDs in 2008.

Station layout

Like other downtown transfer stations, Gallery Place has a two-level configuration. However, unlike Metro Center and L'Enfant Plaza, where the platforms cross centrally, the Green and Yellow Line platforms are located near the east end of the station, resulting in an off-balance layout. This is a result of the Green and Yellow Lines' location below 7th Street NW, while the Red Line must bend towards the southeast in order to reach Judiciary Square and Union Station.^[4]

Plans to add a pedestrian tunnel connecting Gallery Place with Metro Center have long been in the works. The "Gallery Place/Chinatown - Metro Center Pedestrian Passageway Tunnel Study" was completed in July 2005.^[5]

Gallery

• 

  Entrance to the Gallery Place Metro station, along 7th Street at the Verizon Center.

• 

  The Glory of the Chinese Descendants at the Chinatown exit

• 

  The lower level platform. The orange LED platform edge lights were replaced by red LEDs in 2008.

References

1. ^ Neighborhood profiles WDCEP Retrieved 2011-10-19
2. ^ Art by Metro Line
3. ^ "Station names updated for new map" (Press release). Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. 2011-11-03. Archived from the original on 2011-11-05. http://www.webcitation.org/62yKzsSXn. Retrieved 2011-11-05. 
4. ^ Gallery Place-Chinatown station evacuation map WMATA Retrieved 2010-12-16
5. ^ Parsons; KPG Design Studio; Basile Baumann Prost & Associates (2005-07). "Gallery Place/Chinatown - Metro Center Pedestrian Passageway Tunnel Study". WMATA Office of Planning and Project Development. http://www.wmata.com/pdfs/planning/Station%20Access/Gallery_Metro_Center_NoAppendices.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 

External links

• WMATA: Gallery Place Station
• StationMasters Online: Gallery Pl-Chinatown Station
• The Schumin Web Transit Center: Gallery Place Station (Upper Level)
• The Schumin Web Transit Center: Gallery Place Station (Lower Level)
• G Street and 9th Street entrance from Google Maps Street View
• F Street and 7th Street entrance from Google Maps Street View
• H Street and 7th Street entrance from Google Maps Street View