Gallery Place–Chinatown (Washington Metro) Information & Gallery Place–Chinatown (Washington Metro) Links at HealthHaven.com

Gallery Place–Chinatown
Station statistics
Address	630 H Street, Northwest; Washington, D.C. 20001
Lines	Red Line Green Line Yellow Line
Connections	Metrobus; DC Circulator
Platforms	2 side platforms (upper level); 1 island platform (lower level)
Tracks	2 upper level, 2 lower level
Other information
Opened	December 15, 1976
Accessible
Code	B01 (upper level); F01 (lower level)
Owned by	Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Formerly	Gallery Place (1976-1986)
Traffic
Passengers (2006)	7.545 million ▲ 6%
Services

Gallery Place–Chinatown 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.

Gallery Place–Chinatown 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.

The station was originally named "Gallery Place" after the nearby National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1986, "Chinatown" was added to the station name (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.^[1]

[edit] Service

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/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo and Anacostia.

[edit] Improvements

Plans to add a pedestrian tunnel connecting Gallery Place–Chinatown with Metro Center have long been in the works. The "Gallery Place/Chinatown - Metro Center Pedestrian Passageway Tunnel Study" was completed in July 2005.^[2]

This station is a testing ground for new features in Metro stations. 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.