Old Subway Walls on Display
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
A display of old subway wall decorations in the Union Square Subway Station near the stairway to the downtown number 6 train.
I didn’t see a plaque or anything, but it looks like they cut the whole thing out when doing a renovation. I see a layer of brick, concrete and maybe a bit of Manhattan bedrock, or is that more concrete?
14th Street-Union Square Complex
Mary Miss Framing Union Square, 1998
Glass, enameled steel, and aluminum frames highlighting historic and architectural elements throughout station complex
Mary Miss worked with architect Lee Harris Pomeroy to use the rehabilitation of Union Square station as an opportunity to uncover hidden structural elements, cables, and conduits – some still functional and others replaced by new improvements. Old decorative work reappeared during construction, such as mosaics, pilasters, name plaques, and six terra cotta eagles from the 1904 station, once presumed lost.
I found the red framing annoying trying to get good shots of the pillars without the red steel intruding, but I guess bright red does alert travel-trance eyes to the art.
Hi Michael, loved these photos. My father God rest him, worked on the railway, so it kind of reminded me of him.
Urban archaeloG! Very cool.
Bet was "fun" cutting through that thick a wall, even with power saws…
I think the section on the right with the black is a poured concrete foundation wall, not sure why so much of a gap between it and the brick, but it was either filled with concrete or just at the doorway and is hollow the rest of the way.
Yeah, Lost, it couldn’t have been easy getting these nice chunks of wall out without destroying it, or having the roof fall on their heads.
Cool, new icon, I.
I should do a subway art series of models like the Astor Place beaver, that eagle on 14th street and a few others that are pretty cool.
Those were terra cotta just like the ones on the building facades, made by the same companies, but the mosaic murals were done by others.
Yeah, that would make a good project for you. Can you do colors?
Sure, in fact that Beaver or Eagle’s low relief could be easily done in clay and glazed in colors like the original. The issue would be having a kiln big enough.
I think there’s 2 stations I can think of that used the eagle- 23rd st I think I saw or 34th, and 14th, and of course Astor Place used the Beaver- only one I know of that did. I think most of the stations otherwise- at least the newer ones used all mosaics, so I’m thinking only the older section downtown – wall st, whitehall st, city hall etc is where they used actual terra cotta blocks.
Hmm, have to give some thought to a subway series.
I just located probably 15 Astor place Beaver photos of differing quality, lighting, size and clarity, a few of those were taken pretty straight on and I’d guess on a tripod- subway station has got to be THE worst place to try to get photos in- lousy lighting, florescents that make you look like death warmed over, strong shadows, muggers around.
I found the bunch of photos show the surface texture differently from each other too, and the low relief either made "flat" by flash or brought out well with good lighting. A couple of photos show the brick wall below which is good for me cause I can scale the size of the Beaver plaque from the brick’s standard length in CAD- looks like 12×18
So I’ve got enough visuals of the Beaver to do one.