“An Underground Movement: Designers, Builders, Riders” by Owen Smith at NYCT 36th Street Station | Photo: David Lubarsky / Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Weekday mornings, as I walk to the 36th Street subway stop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, I quicken my pace, anxious that if I miss the train, I’ll be late for work; worried that if it’s too crowded, I won’t get a seat on the 40-minute commute that lies ahead. As I hurry, I run through to-do lists in my head: reschedule my doctor’s appointment (again); remind the landlord that the kitchen faucet leaks (still); buy stamps so I can finally send my mother’s birthday card (belated). Once in a while, if there are flashing police lights near the entrance on 4th Avenue, I remember the mass shooting that took place at this very station in 2022. When I race through the turnstile, my mind swirls like the discarded papers, dead leaves, and cigarette butts caught in the eddy of wind.
And then I look up. I lock eyes with a man in a hardhat, boring open the very tunnel I am about to enter. To the right of him, a child looks up at its mother: with hope? With worry? Across from them, blueprints are being drawn up, progress to be made. And as I descend the stairs to the Manhattan-bound track, the spire of the Chrysler building beckons, and the legs of the Rockettes kick off the day. For the briefest of moments, I am drawn out of my stress and into the larger story of New York City. These faces are now familiar; they greet me every day and every night. They are subjects of Owen Smith’s mosaic series An Underground Movement: Designers, Builders, Riders, one of over four hundred permanent art installations in New York City’s train and subway stations.
That my morning encounters with Smith’s mosaics alter my mood is not surprising. The principle of creating aesthetically pleasing public transportation spaces in New York City—sites where function and efficiency are of prime concern—can be traced back to the City Beautiful movement of the late nineteenth century, a progressive urban planning philosophy that took the view that beauty in public spaces could improve social conditions and civic life. The Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commission (the original governing body for the New York City subway) wrote aesthetics into their contract with the city in 1899: “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 to their efficiency.”
One of the first of the original 28 stations to open in 1904, City Hall featured vaulted ceilings covered in Guastavino tilework, skylights with floral tracery, and chandeliers. Glazed terracotta eagles at the Union Square station followed. Handmade tiles featuring beavers hung at Astor Place in a nod to renowned furrier and socialite Jacob Astor.
While the City Beautiful movement created some stately and ornamental structures that still exist today, like Grand Central Terminal and Grand Army Plaza, it was viewed with increasing skepticism in the latter half of the twentieth century, when working New Yorkers were in dire need of basic resources. (Today, it’s those contemporary works that nod to the complexities and joys of the city, like Eric Fischl’s Garden of Circus Delights in Penn Station, that help lift me above the frustrating and exhausting experience of commuting on public transportation and inure me to the chaos of the crowds. As the city’s population expanded and the system began to deteriorate, many of these original works were lost or destroyed.
By 1980, after decades of deferred maintenance, both the stations and the trains themselves were on the brink of collapse and in dire need of repairs. In a fervent letter to Mayor Ed Koch, Governor Hugh Carey, and the state legislature, MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch pleaded for funds, citing a “desperate situation of public transportation.” His overtures were heard, and in 1981 the legislature granted the MTA permission to issue bonds to secure funding—over seven billion dollars’ worth. As the MTA’s first Capital Improvement plan was born, art was getting a permanent role in the city’s future: In 1982, the Percent for Art law was passed, requiring city-funded projects to allot one percent of their budget on public artwork. The MTA responded by creating the Arts & Design department in 1985.
The result? One of the world’s largest collections of site-specific art, including mosaics and works in ceramics, metal, and glass. A colorful glass tryptic depicting skyscrapers and tenements, City of Glass by Romare Bearden went up at Westchester Square-East Tremont Avenue station in the Bronx. Ming Fay’s watercolors of fish, celebrating the return of shad to New York waters, were turned into expansive wall mosaics at Delancey Street/Essex Street station in a piece called Shad Crossing, Delancey Orchard. At the elevated 104 Street station in Queens, the series On the Right Track, by Béatrice Coron, reconfigures the panels that line the subway platform into giant playing cards. Rather than traditional suits and numbers, the cards’ laser-cut stainless steel silhouettes depict attributes like “strong,” “unique,” and “curious”—traits held by many of the subway’s ridership. Other notable artists featured work include SoLeWitt, Yoko Ono, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence, and Milton Glaser. Throughout each of the five boroughs, riders can enter stations and be transported in more than one sense. The artworks on display conjure playfulness, fascination, histories, and fellowship, and their artists are as diverse in background, career level, and age as the city itself.
Stations without art can also offer memorable experiences, but of a different kind. At the other end of my daily commute is the artless, dirty, chaos of the West 4th Street station in Manhattan. When I’m there, I keep my eyes down on the ground: down to navigate four different sets of stairs, down to avoid the cold stares of the other exhausted commuters and the despondent pleas from those unable to have their basic needs met. Down to ensure I don’t step in a puddle or pile of human waste. Down—because there’s no real reason to look up. Though it’s in the top five percent of busiest stations in the system, serving seven different train lines, West 4th Street is one of nearly 200 stations without permanent art.
Who gets to decide which stations get art, and which don’t? It all depends on the other work being done (or not). Commissioning artwork takes money, and installing artwork takes time and space, so the likeliest site for new art is a station scheduled for construction or rehabilitation through capital funding. Through the Percent for Art law, artist commissions are built into the capital funds. And since the station will need to be closed during construction, there’s no worry of disrupting the flow of commuter traffic.
It’s not clear which stations are slated for upgrades and renovations—and with them, art—in the coming months or years. The MTA’s 2025-2029 Capital Plan includes the repair or rehabilitation of over 150 subway stations and work to increase the number of accessible stations to 50 percent from its current dismal 30 percent. Exactly which stations will undergo such work have not been named, and though its current conditions warrant a facelift, West 4th Street is not included on any of the upcoming “Re-NEW-vations,” in which the MTA takes advantage of weekend service outages to clean and repair stations.
There’s a moment of hope each morning as my uptown D train pulls into West 4th Street, and I look to see if the escalator, which has been out of service for “upgrades” for over a year now, is back up and running. But I’ve got nothing to report, as whatever is happening—or not happening—remains hidden behind plywood. Will the hoardings reveal some inspiring works of art? Likely, no. At least, not any time soon. The scope of work for the escalator only mentions “state of good repair work,” which includes “replacing tile finishes on walls, adding new handrails to stairwells adjacent to the escalators, and replacing existing lighting with new LED lighting.” Furthermore, the Arts & Design website has no current open calls for submission. For now, I will have to traverse the depths of this station with only dirty tiles, city detritus, and hundreds of tired New Yorkers for company. Perhaps I should learn to keep my eyes up—even underground, New York is, after all, rife with inspiration for future artworks.
