GETTING STARTED

I am an architect, so I am no stranger to surveying spaces from scratch. Still, it would be great to have something to base my drawings off of. To begin my quest, I went into the stations to look for the maps that tell you where the exits are. They look like this:

And so I thought alright, I’ll just have to go to each station to take a picture of the map. And then I thought, is there a chance these maps are online? So I went home and did a quick search and bam! Here they are:

Find all neighborhood maps like this one at http://web.mta.info/maps/neighborhood_maps.htm

Find all neighborhood maps like this one at http://web.mta.info/maps/neighborhood_maps.htm

They are called “neighborhood maps” under “maps” in mta.info. 

They are neither editable nor printable, but a quick print-screen will do. With them, I am ready to go out and take some actions!

 

SQUARE, SQUARE, SQUARE, SQUARE, CIRCLE…

There are more than 400 subway stations in New York, and ideally I would like to draw them all. 

But, like many things in life, I know if I aim too high, I will end up getting overwhelmed and giving up. As such, I have decided to start with five. Considering all the work that has to go in- taking pictures, collecting information online, surveying, modelling, drawing and photoshopping, five is already a handful, but hopefully it is manageable. 

The more complex and confusing stations are the ones with trains going in multiple directions, and to make it simple, I picked five stations along Broadway. 


Paradoxically, even though Broadway slices the rectangular Manhattan blocks into triangles and trapezoids, these intersections are all named squares and circles. (I know, I know “squares” have an ancient root, but I’m just saying.. :P) The list of stations I am going to start with is 14th Street – Union Square, 23rd Street – Madison Square, 34th Street – Herald Square, 42nd Street – Times Square, and 59th Street – Columbus Circle.
 

Pilot

It all started when my old office moved downtown to the financial district. The office is on Broadway, somewhere near the Fulton Street station. The station is HUGE -  there are so many exits that it was very confusing, and it took me and my coworkers forever to figure out how to get to the exit nearest to the office.

I am from Hong Kong, and in Hong Kong’s MTR (subway) stations, there are diagrams like these on the walls:

List of station layouts can be found here: http://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/system_map.html

List of station layouts can be found here: http://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/system_map.html

A quick search shows that Japan has similar:

And I thought to myself, why isn’t there any in NYC’s stations? Fulton Street is definitely not the only complex station, and I can't be the only person who wishes there is some form of visualization to help one find his way inside the station.

So I gave myself the challenge to make it happen, and this blog will be a record of this journey.