maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. In 1901, the firm of Heins & LaFarge was hired to design the underground stations. Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway. The 33rd Street station was constructed as part of the route segment from Great Jones Street to 41st Street. Construction on this section of the line began on September 12, 1900. The section from Great Jones Street to a point 100 feet (30 m) north of 33rd Street was awarded to Holbrook, Cabot & Daly Contracting Company, while the remaining section to 41st Street was done by Ira A. Shaler. The section between 33rd and 41st Streets was built as two double-track tunnels. To accommodate a never-built connection to the mainline platforms at Grand Central Terminal, the tunnel carrying northbound trains was shifted eastward (nearly touching the eastern curb line of Park Avenue). At the time, the railroads that operated the terminal had not agreed to the connection. Property owners did not learn about the change until a series of accidents occurred along the excavation site in 1902. A dynamite explosion near Park Avenue and 41st Street on January 27, 1902, killed five people, and several mansions on Park Avenue fell into the excavation site that March due to rockslides. Shaler became known by the pejorative nickname of "hoodoo contractor" as a result. After Shaler was killed by a rockslide in his own excavation site on June 17, 1902, his estate completed the construction of the tunnel between 33rd and 41st Street. By late 1903, the subway was nearly complete, but the IRT Powerhouse and the system's electrical substations were still under construction, delaying the system's opening. The 33rd Street station opened on October 27, 1904, as one of the original 28 stations of the New York City Subway from City Hall to 145th Street on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Litigation over the IRT's Murray Hill tunnels continued for several years; in 1905, a judge found that the city government was responsible for the January 1902 explosion. In spite of this, the northbound tunnel was never relocated, as it had already been completed. Service changes and station renovations After the first subway line was completed in 1908, the station was served by local trains along both the West Side (now the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street)