UNUSUALLY for a NYC subway station that opened in July 1918, the 68th Street-Hunter College station has a mezzanine section built over the tracks. When it’s not too busy, you can have a seat and watch as #6 trains pull in and out. The pillars that support the station roof extend right through the mezzanine. Of course, this wasn’t an original feature of the station but was part of renovations that occurred in the 1990s.
By 1918, mosaic subway signage designed by Squire Vickers were hitting their stride, design-wise. Part of an art discipline called Arts and Crafts, subway signage used “earth tones” of the color palette such as green and brown, with bright blue added for accent. Note hwo different shades of green and blue in the individual mosaic pieces are perceived as a whole. When I was a kid my parents bought me mosaic art sets and I would have a ball putting artworks together. I wonder if those kind of sets are still sold.
In a few years, Vickers would get a little more adventurous with color in the mosaic signs on BMT stations built for the Canarise and Flushing Lines, and then go a different direction with the Machine Age uncolored IND stations of the 1930s.
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3/13/24
5 comments
You may hear those express trains, but you certainly can’t see them.
This is a highly trafficked station. It services both Hunter College and the two major hospital complexes further east. It is very shabby and unwelcoming, but mercifully is undergoing some sort of reconstruction.
Yes the redesigned the Lex andv68th st local stop onthe Lexington Ave line of the IRT.
But of course what design admirers and city boosters NEVER tell you is that the result of spending millions to renovate the.68th Stvstation was that the average c ride NEVER wants to sit in the area. The are is poorly cleaned so the the sets are dirty and often STICKY
with godvknows what. THEN there are the TYPES
who Do sut there. Disorderly of all types, apparent
junkies, angry crazies, agressive panhandle. And th here’s NEVER police in the area the dozens of times I
or family members have been through the station.
So who wants to sit or enjoy this “wonderful” new
design? This is just the Architectual/Design and
bureaucrats with access to billions of taxpayer’s
dollars having NO understanding of the real World
subway riders really live in……
I’ll just mention, as a point of information, that the MTA is in the process of installing elevators in this station (completion date not known)
A whole lot longer than the two years it took to build the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ2YxO_jdgI&t=149s