As part of Contract 3, the IRT agreed to build a subway line along Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn.

[6] The construction of the subway along Nostrand Avenue spurred real estate development in the surrounding areas.

[10] In January 1919, the Public Service Commission decided that the Nostrand Avenue Line should be extended to Coney Island using the Manhattan Beach Branch.

The extension would have meant that passengers wishing to get to Coney Island would not have to pay the double fare that was required to get there via the Brooklyn Rapid Transit lines.

[17][18] The Nostrand Avenue Line was once again slated to be extended further south in 1968 as part of the newly created Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Program for Action.

Expected to be completed by the mid-1970s and early 1980s,[29][30] lines for the Program for Action had to be reduced or canceled altogether due to the 1970s fiscal crisis.

[31] In October 2008, the Regional Plan Association in the report Tomorrow's Transit suggested that the Nostrand Avenue Line be extended two stops to Kings Highway as a way to improve travel times and reliability for subway service on the Brooklyn IRT.

It is the only terminal station in the subway system at the end of a physical line that does not have an island platform, and it was built with two side platforms and two tracks to allow for a planned, but not carried out extension of the IRT Nostrand Avenue Line south towards Voorhies Avenue in Sheepshead Bay.

[34] The platforms are connected at the south end just past the bumper blocks (forming a "U" shape), mitigating what is otherwise an inefficient terminal design.

This terminal setup is inefficient, and combined with the Rogers Avenue Junction's also-inefficient design (see below), this limits capacity on the line.

Prior to the building of the exit at the south end of the station, there was only a temporary wooden ramp connecting the platforms and the tunnels were actually visible to passengers.

There is a closed tower at the south end of the southbound platform at the Franklin Avenue station.

[40] This junction is a severe traffic bottleneck during rush hours, and rebuilding it would require massive construction including the tearing up of Eastern Parkway.