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| Re: Historic Subway Tiles With Nothing To Do With Racism Or Even Confederacy to be Removed (1447218) | |||
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Re: Historic Subway Tiles With Nothing To Do With Racism Or Even Confederacy to be Removed |
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Posted by Michael549 on Mon Aug 21 03:01:52 2017, in response to Re: Historic Subway Tiles With Nothing To Do With Racism Or Even Confederacy to be Removed, posted by Michael549 on Mon Aug 21 02:52:59 2017. NYC Subway Tiles from Wikipedia:Many New York City Subway stations are decorated with colorful ceramic plaques and tile mosaics. Of these, many take the form of signs, identifying the station's location. Much of this ceramic work was in place when the subway system originally opened on October 27, 1904. Newer work continues to be installed each year, much of it cheerful and fanciful.[1][2] Original IRT and BMT tiles Heins & LaFarge (1901–1907) Faience plaque with beaver at Astor Place The earliest ceramic work was done by Heins & LaFarge (artists George C. Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge), starting in 1901 and continuing up to 1907. Heins and LaFarge were both relatives of John LaFarge (brother-in-law and son, respectively), a leading stained-glass artisan of the day. They were part of the Arts and Crafts movement and worked in the Beaux-Arts architecture style, both of which were very much in vogue at the turn of the 20th century. At the time of their hiring they had completed large projects at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Bronx Zoo. In addition to designing the artistic motifs, Heins and LaFarge also did much of the architectural work that determined the overall appearance of entire subway stations. They designed name tablets that were made up of tiles with the station name in serif and sans serif roman lettering, with all of the letters capitalized. Some of the tiles by Heins and LaFarge are for station directional information such as directions to exits, platforms of different lines and systems, and platforms of different directions. The name tablets in each station contained elaborate border tilework surrounding the tablet.[3] Heins and LaFarge knew what materials would stand up well to heavy-duty cleaning and scrubbing; they worked with the ceramic-producing firms Grueby Faience Company of Boston and Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati. Their ceramic artwork includes colorful pictorial motifs relevant to a station's location, for example: The South Ferry loop station is decorated by 15 bas-relief representations of a sailing ship on the water. The Astor Place station is decorated with large ceramic beaver emblems, representing the beaver pelts that helped make John Jacob Astor wealthy. The 116th Street – Columbia University station includes a bas-relief emblem representing nearby Columbia University. Their bas-reliefs in the subway have been likened to the work of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Della Robbia. Much of their tile work was station-identifying signs to guide passengers. Besides serving an aesthetic function, the images are helpful to New York City's large population of non-English speakers and those who can't read. A traveler can be told to "get off at the stop with the picture of a beaver." As well as pictorial plaques and ceramic signs, Heins and LaFarge designed the running decorative motifs, such as egg-and-dart patterns, along station ceilings.[3] In addition to their wall-side tilework, Heins and LaFarge “hung large, illuminated porcelain-enamel signs over the express platforms, using black type [actually hand-lettering] on a white background and painted station names on the round cast-iron columns.”[3] Squire Vickers (1906–1942) In 1906, Squire J. Vickers, then a young architect, was hired. Vickers showed much respect for Heins and LaFarge, but his work consists much more of mosaics; he did not use bas-relief, citing the need for easy cleaning. Vickers also preserved the fonts that Heins and LaFarge used in their name tablets; however, in Vickers's new name tablets, the tilework on the borders of the tablets was more simplified.[3] In his pictorial work, Vickers emphasizes actual buildings as landmarks, such as his colorful depiction of Brooklyn Borough Hall (1919) at the station of that name, rather than Heins and LaFarge's beavers and sailing ships. He describes his technique: "...the mosaic was of the cut variety, that is, the body is burned in strips, glazed, and then broken into irregular shapes. The designs are set by hand and shipped in sections with paper pasted on the front. These sections are set against the wall flush with the tile. In certain stations the color bands and name tablets are a combination of mosaic and hand-made tile" — (Stookey, 1994). Enamel station-identification signs Through the 1930s, Vickers ordered some enamel signs for the IRT and BMT from both Nelke Signs and the Baltimore Enamel Company. These signs were located on girder and cast-iron columns, and made them easier to identify stations. Shortened station names on the porcelain-enamel signs had a condensed sans serif capital-letter font.[3] Vickers continued to work on subway projects for 36 years, until 1942. 2007 exhibition Bilingual Canal Street (BMT Broadway Line) station ID Two exhibitions, one celebrating the work of Heins & LaFarge and one for Vickers, were mounted at the New York Transit Museum's Gallery Annex[4] at Grand Central Terminal during 2007. |
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