Art Improves Public Transportation

The rehabilitation of the West 8th Street NY Aquarium station of the D, F, Q subway lines in Coney Island, Brooklyn, has been honored by the Art Commission of the City of New York with a 2003 Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design. The award was presented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a ceremony at the Brooklyn Museum on July 12.

(left to right) Joyce Frank Menschel, President, Art Commission; Sandra
Bloodworth Director MTA Arts for Transit; Porie Saikia-Eapen, Chief Architect,
New York City Transit; Cosema E. Crawford, Chief Engineer, New York City
Transit; Katherine N. Lapp, Executive Director, MTA; James McConnell III RA,
Design Architect, Daniel Frankfurt, PC; Peter Dorsey, Acconci Studios;
and Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor, City of New York.

The rehabilitation is a successful artist/architect collaboration driven by the same principles that guided the building of the first subway over a hundred years ago. These principles were spelled out in the original 1899 Contract for the Construction of a Rapid Transit Railroad:

The railway and its equipment…constitute a great public work. All parts of the structure where exposed to public sight shall therefore be designed, constructed and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance, as well as their efficiency.

From the very beginning, the subway’s original planners, in particular chief engineer William Barclay Parsons, were committed to making the underground system inviting and attractive as well as fast and efficient. They were strongly influenced by the “City Beautiful” movement and believed that uplifting art and architecture would bring out people’s better qualities. And so architects and designers were commissioned to give the system a distinctive style. Furniture, lighting, signs, and other features were designed with an eye toward beauty as well as utility. Instead of building a system in which each station looked much like all the others, the first subway line featured mosaics and other ornamental features that gave each stations a line identity as well as a distinctive appearance.

Today, the MTA renovates and improves subway and commuter rail stations in New York City and its suburbs through its Capital Program, using a portion of the funds for the installation of permanent works of art. The MTA Arts for Transit program guides the repair and restoration of original mosaics and commissions new works from contemporary artists. Both well established — Romare Bearden, Milton Glaser, Nancy Spero, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Otterness, to name only a few — and emerging artists are chosen for these commissions. Just as in the building of the first subways, the aim is to make public transportation inviting as well as convenient and quick: uniquely appealing art creates a sense of comfort and security and reinforces the identity of individual stations. The latest subway customer satisfaction surveys back this strategy: 59 percent of riders notice the works; of these 85 percent feel the artwork improves the system.

“West 8th Street illustrates the important contributions the MTA’s Arts for Transit program can bring to the job of making subway stations more functional. The idea is not simply to put pretty art into the system but to use artwork and creative design to enhance the station’s functionality while beautifying it — to make something useful beautiful and vice versa — and to link the art to the neighborhood and its unique history,” said MTA Executive Director Katherine N. Lapp in accepting the Art Commission award for the MTA.

Design of the West 8th Street Station South Facade

The design of the station’s south (ocean-facing) façade windscreen is by New York artist Vito Acconci, Acconci Studio; James McConnell, Daniel Frankfurt, PC Engineers and Architects developed the overall station rehabilitation, which also includes NW stairways, canopies, lighting, communications and other systems, and yellow ADA bubble tile at the platform edge.

The location of the West 8th station inspired the original idea and design for the south façade windscreen. The historic boardwalk and beaches, the Coney Island Aquarium (directly connected to the station), the Cyclone along with the all of the history of this area and specific site — formerly a part of the famous Luna Park Amusements, all influenced the basic idea. The West 8th Street station actually lies on the approximate site of a former a roller coaster ride.

Before this rehabilitation, the windscreens along the platform edge completely blocked any views from this elevated vantage point. The new windscreen opens the platform windscreens to reveal these unique surroundings to the NYC Transit passengers as they arrive at Coney Island.

The south facade also presented a unique opportunity to be creative with the design of the windscreen itself. "The normally horizontal and vertical steel windscreen tubes and panels, for example, have been transformed into a more sinuous form that evokes the notion of a wave, or that of motion as in the cyclone or the subway itself,” noted Vito Acconci. “Flat planes become three-dimensional volumes. As the façade waves up and down, it waves in and out. The facade bulges out to enclose the stairway; it bulges in or out until it reaches a breaking point, and opens up to make a view; it bulges in or out just far enough to make seats inside. The façade on one level waves in between the waves of the other level; it’s as if the façade breathes in and out.”

Arts for Transit has installed 135 works in the MTA network; another 81 commissions are in progress.