Maybe the cleaners don’t want to get electrocuted, but it really seems like all these tiles need is a brush and some soapy water. Seventh Avenue uptown platform.

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.

Subway Art on the GammaBlog

New York has some great subway mosaics. This is not one of them, it is just too cute.and reeks of NYU public relations. N, R, W line at 8th Street and Broadway.

Broadway actress, Billie Burke married Flo Ziegfeld. Burke is best known as Glinda the Good Witch of the North from the Wizard of Oz.
www.musicals101.com/ziegwho.htm
N R W subway station, Broadway and 23rd Street. View Large

The mosaic work in this station remind me of the also excellent work in the Museum of Natural History station.

Lovely mosaic representation of the hat of William Barclay Parsons. ” In 1894, he became chief engineer of the New York Rapid Transit Commission, designing the original plan for the Interborough Rapid Transit subway, which opened in 1904. His thorough examinations of Manhattan’s topography resulted in his use of the less expensive and more efficient cut-and-cover construction method for the first subway lines.”
c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/w… View Large

Forgotten NY on Subway Mosaics

View Large

Empress Voyage - The motifs in the individual ceramic panels are stylized interpretations of Chinese merchandise popular in colonial New York