As part of station renovations that will connect the Bleecker Street station (on the Lexington Avenue Line #6 train) to the IND Broadway-Lafayette station, the MTA has temporarily removed the station wall tiling, exposing blank brick walls. I imagine this situation will exist for a few months until the tiling can be reinstalled. The city takes great care these days to preserve the original 19-oughts flavor of its historic stations, so when complete, Bleecker Street will be something to write home to Mother about.
Bleecker Street, which opened 10/27/1904, the subways’ Opening Day, boasts exquisite robins’ egg blue station ID tablets produced by the Grueby Faience Company of Boston. They’re protected landmarks, so the city can’t remove them and install bland black and white Helvetica signs in their place.
7/13/12