Van Cortlandt Park – 242nd Street (IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line)

Van Cortlandt Park – 242nd Street is the northern terminal station on the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of 242nd Street and Broadway in the Bronx, it is served by the 1 train at all times.

This station is adjacent to Van Cortlandt Park, Manhattan College, and the 240th Street Yard of the subway system. It serves Riverdale, an affluent community in the Bronx. A snaking steep walk along West 242nd Street and Manhattan College Parkway west of Broadway leads to the college and along the way is a panoramic view of the yard.

The station has two tracks with one island platform and two side platforms. There are bumper blocks at the north end of the station. The station house is just beyond the ends of the tracks at platform level. The two side platforms are normally unused and have a windscreen nearly along their entire length. A crew quarters straddles the tracks and platforms at the south end of the station.

Just south of the station, the line widens to three tracks, which is the configuration up to just before Dyckman Street and again between 145th Street and 103rd Street. This is an unusual layout in the New York City Subway as the middle express track does not platform at any stations along its route. No service has been regularly operated using the express track in this section since the 1970s, when a peak-direction Broadway "Thru Express" was operated. Instead, the middle track is used for sending non-revenue trains to the storage yard at 137th Street – City College after they finish their final run, as well as for extra flexibility when one of the local tracks is undergoing repairs. On March 30, 2005, the station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Literary reference
The station is cited in Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road as the last stop on the subway taken by the protagonist Sal Paradise on his initial attempt to leave New York City for a new life in California.