DC Metro station architecture types overview and map

[afigg]

The Greater Greater Washington blog has posted what I consider a neat overview of the different architecture types for the 91 underground and aboveground DC Metro stations. Photos of the different underground station vault designs and above ground station roofs and an interactive map that highlights which stations have the 11 different identified types. Thought it would be of interest to transit geeks.

Metro has eleven types of station architecture. Learn them all with this one interactive map. Excerpt:

Metro is well known for its distinctive vaulted station ceilings, but not all stations are the same. There are eleven different basic architectural station designs in the Metro system. Let's see where they are.

Note: For the purposes of this discussion, I'm using some of the station type names from the Washington page of NYCSubway.org. In other cases, I'm using my own term.

First, the underground stations.

Waffle
By far the most common station type is the "waffle" style vault envisioned by the CFA and Harry Weese. This station type is present at 32 stations, including most of the downtown stops. These vaults are characterized by the smaller rectangular coffers that line the walls, making them look somewhat like a waffle wrapped around the train room.
Most of these stations were constructed using the pour-in-place method, though Dupont Circle was constructed using precast panels.

 

[Metra Electric Guest]

My parent's neighbor here in Chicago was the project manager in DC for Harry Weese on the Metro project. Needless to say he loves big projects, megaprojects even! And a very nice guy too.

 

[George Harris]

more later. No time now.

I was there for the first part of the WMATA construction. Loved the Waffle stations. Considered the consitent theme a great idea. Therer are actually multiple geometries of tehse things that are not visible to the user. among them:

Low arch for the shallow, read mostly cut and cover construction stations, wide track centers center platform

Low arch for the shallow, read mostly cut and cover construction stations, narrow track centers center platform

Low arch for the shallow, read mostly cut and cover construction stations, side platforms

High arch for the deep, read mostly tunneled stations, wide track centers center platform

High arch for the deep, read mostly tunneled stations, narrow track centers center platform

High arch for the deep, read mostly tunneled station, side platforms

The three cross vault stations, Metro Center, Gallery Place and L'Enfant Plaza are each unique in that vault geometries are each slightly different. . And then there is the fact that Metro Center and L'Enfant are both cross vault but Gallery Place is T shaped.

 

[Tracktwentynine]

Thanks for sharing my post. It was lots of fun to put together.