The 61st Street–Woodside station (announced as the Woodside–61st Street station on trains) is an express station on the IRT Flushing Line of the New York City Subway located at 61st Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens. It is served by the 7 train, with additional peak-direction <7> service during rush hours. History Early history The 1913 Dual Contracts called for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT; later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, or BMT) to build new lines in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Queens did not receive many new IRT and BRT lines compared to Brooklyn and the Bronx, since the city's Public Service Commission (PSC) wanted to alleviate subway crowding in the other two boroughs first before building in Queens, which was relatively undeveloped. The IRT Flushing Line was to be one of two Dual Contracts lines in the borough, along with the Astoria Line; it would connect Flushing and Long Island City, two of Queens' oldest settlements, to Manhattan via the Steinway Tunnel. When the majority of the line was built in the early 1910s, most of the route went through undeveloped land, and Roosevelt Avenue had not been constructed. Community leaders advocated for more Dual Contracts lines to be built in Queens to allow development there. 61st Street–Woodside opened on April 21, 1917 as Woodside, as part of an extension of the IRT Flushing Line to Alburtis Avenue (now 103rd Street–Corona Plaza). The Long Island Rail Road station predates the station, as it originally opened in 1869. On February 29, 1928, five petitions signed with 600 names were sent to the New York State Transit Commission (NYSTC), requesting that an escalator be constructed at the station to the southeastern corner of 61st Street and Roosevelt Avenue. On July 25, the NYSTC ordered the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to install a double-width escalator from the mezzanine to that corner, similar to one at the Third Avenue entrance at Grand Central station on the same line. The new escalator was placed into service on December 27, 1930. Later years The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. The IRT routes were given numbered designations in 1948 with the introduction of "R-type" rolling stock, which contained rollsigns with numbered designations for each service. The route from Times Square to Flushing became known as the 7. On October 17, 1949,