It is close to Fort Tryon Park with the Cloisters medieval art museum, and the Mother Cabrini Shrine.

An additional exit through the side of the hill leads to Bennett Avenue and provides access to the Broadway Valley area of Washington Heights.

[6][7] On December 9, 1924, the New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) gave preliminary approval for the construction of the IND Eighth Avenue Line.

Squire J. Vickers, the chief architect of the Dual System, helped design the 190th Street station.

[5]: 10 On December 28, 1950, the Board of Transportation issued a report concerning the construction of bomb shelters in the subway system.

[21] In 1951, researchers from New York University concluded that in the event of a nuclear attack, the 190th Street station would provide adequate shelter from fallout.

This was ascertained after the researchers conducted tests on cosmic rays inside deep subway stations in the area.

Bills were proposed in the New York State Legislature to put the elevators out of fare control, but these failed in committee.

On September 5, 1957, the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) began allowing free public access to the elevators at the 181st and 190th Street stations.

[28] The attendants at the five stations are primarily maintenance and cleaning workers who suffered injuries that made it hard for them to continue doing their original jobs.

[35][36] MTA employees had joined riders in worrying about an increase in crime as a result of the cuts after an elevator operator at 181st Street on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line helped save a stabbed passenger.

However, on December 7, 2007, the MTA announced that it would not remove the remaining elevator operators at these stations, due to pushback from elected officials and residents from the area.

[38] In October 2018, the MTA once again proposed removing the elevator operators at the five stations, but this was reversed after dissent from the Transport Workers' Union.

[5]: 5 The outer walls of the platform level consist of tiled alcoves, slightly recessed within concrete arches.

[2][a] Although this is an extremely deep station, the Bennett Avenue entrance is at a lower elevation than the mezzanine, so the exit passageway slopes down.

[57] A tunnel leading eastward from the station provides access to Bennett Avenue, midblock between Broadway and 192nd Street,[57] with an entrance built right into the rock face.

[5]: 6  The 207th Street-bound platform contains an exit-only (one turnstile and one gate) ramp that bypasses fare control and leads to the passageway to the Bennett Avenue entrance.

[58] The entrance at the top of the ridge is a head house located at the end of Fort Washington Avenue, at Margaret Corbin Circle.

A lamppost and a steel sign with the word "SUBWAY" is located on the sidewalk of Fort Washington Avenue at the top of these stairs.

[62] The station is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and thus cannot be used by passengers with wheelchairs, because access from the fare control area to the platforms is only possible via stairways.

[63] Additionally, the elevators as well as the free out-of-system traverse between Fort Washington and Bennett Avenues are not ADA-compliant for wheelchair users either (unlike at 181st Street), since the entrance to the former is only accessible by several flights of stairs, and another smaller staircase exists between the end of the passageway and the Bennett Avenue exit.