Subway art and architecture
Resources/Tour Follow-Up
The book:
SUBWAY STYLE: 100 Years of Architecture & Design in the New York City Subway (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2004) – Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the opening of the IRT
Official research reports:
A lot of the subway system has been designated by the NYC Landmarks Commission (LPC) and/or listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR). The LPC reports and NR nominations are available on-line.
National Register nominations:
Here are links to the NR nominations for the stations visited on the tour:
Wall Street station
Brooklyn Bridge station
City Hall station
Bleecker Street station
Astor Place station
14th Street-Union Square station
Times Square station
Landmarks Preservation Commission:
Designation report for the “IRT Subway System Underground Interior”
For further reading:
www.nycsubway.org is an amazing site – vast amounts of information on the subway system.
In particular, the site reproduces many early articles on the IRT: http://www.nycsubway.org/irtsubway.html
And this subsection of the site is devoted to the City Hall station: http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/stations?5:979
For early photos of the original above-ground kiosks (of which there is a recent reproduction at Astor Place):http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/kiosks.html
This is a link to the HAER report on the original IRT, prepared by David Framberger (a former colleague of mine at the Landmarks Commission): http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/haer-design-architectural.html; for more of the HAER reports on the subway see http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/haer_index.html
More on the Marine Grill murals by Frederick Dana Marsh, originally at the McAlpin Hotel, which were rescued and installed at the Fulton Street station: http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/artwork_show?22