#J LINE SUBWAY NEW YORK HOW TO#
“There was a huge amount of information being imparted to riders via signage and not only that, now you have to figure out how to manage all of these different routes,” Shapiro says of riding the subway after the merge. It took decades for all of the color, letter and number wayfinding systems to get organized into one cohesive network.
I don’t think that’s an accident.” Another theory concerning color choice, maybe those colors are just what was available in large quantities from the manufacturer.Īfter the three subway systems merged in 1940, new stations were no longer designed according to the IND color system. Yellow, green and blue are very natural colors: yellow like sunlight, green like grass, blue like water. There are yellows, greens, and blues, there are some reds. “Maybe that played into the color choices also,” says Shapiro, Vickers likely chose “colors that would be discernible in artificial light and also not look dingy and have some kind of cheerful effect. With artificial light, the minimal design helped make the stations appear bigger and brighter. There is no expensive terra-cotta, but instead visually clean tiles, that are also easy to physically clean. The font used in IND stations is a machine age san serif in heavy capitals, as opposed to the variety of fanciful fonts found in IRT and BMT stations. “City Hall was meant to be a showpiece,” notes Shapiro, but by the time of the IND, the system needed to be more utilitarian and cost-effective. The city-owned IND opened during the Great Depression, meaning the expensive ornamentation found in the stations of the former two systems just simply couldn’t be afforded. Vickers had worked with architects Heins and Lafarge on IRT and BMT stations. The IND stations have a minimalist aesthetic compared to the ornate IRT and BMT stations. Image courtesy of New York Transit Museum. You can see the assignment of station colors in the chart below, and compare them to the Pantone colors used in today’s station which can be found on the MTA website. At Union Turnpike, the station colors change to yellow. At the next express stop, Forest Hills-71 Ave., the color changes green and all subsequent local stops are light green until the express stop at Union Turnpike- Kew Gardens. The next five stations are all local, so they are a lighter shade of blue. Next, Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave., an express station. The next stop is 65th Street, another local stop, so it is also purple. Let’s say you are in Queens riding west from Northern Boulevard which is purple. “There isn’t anything that we were able to find that says definitively ‘This is the reason why we are doing that,” notes Shapiro, “It does make sense, and that’s part of the reason for the iconography used in the IRT stations and BMT stations.” Though there is no known document where Vickers explains himself yet, “It might be out there,” says Shapiro, “There may be some diaries of his that we don’t have where he runs down that logic. One popular theory is that the colors helped non-English speaking riders, or people who couldn’t read at all, navigate the system. New York Transit Museum curator Jodi Shapiro says it is one of the most common questions she gets asked. Vickers chose the color-coordinated system he employed. There is no definitive answer as to why IND architect Squire J. Just as in the IRT Stations, the BMT stations boasts fanciful ornamentation. The BMT also used numbers to identify their routes, even going into double digits.
For example, at the Wall Street station, the mosaics depict the old wall erected at the northern border of Dutch New Amsterdam, at Columbus Circle, you see mosaics of ships Christopher Columbus sailed on. The unique mosaics at each stop related to the history or landmarks of the ground above. These mosaics, notes New York City Transit Museum curator Jodi Shapiro, may have been a piece of wayfinding in the IRT system. The design of the stations by architects Heins and Lafarge under the direction of chief engineer William Barclay Parsons incorporated elaborate ornamentation including intricate terra-cotta mosaics.
The IRT used numbers to identify their lines, many of which have stayed the same to this day. Before the systems were merged, each had their own wayfinding and identification systems. Each of these systems operated independently of each other until 1940 when the city took over operations of all lines. The Independent Subway, the first city-owned system, opened in 1932. The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Cooperation came along in 1923 after acquiring the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). The first stop was the now-abandoned City Hall Station. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) was the first subway system to open in New York City in 1904.
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