Telling the story of NYC, one subway map at a time

A new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum looks at the history and influence of subway maps

Subway maps are the subject of a new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum, but according to the museum's director, Concetta Bencivenga, these wayfinding diagrams are about much more than getting from point a to point b. "The subway has always been used to either help people navigate place, or to actually create place," she says, and the exhibit, "Navigating New York," aims to show how that happens.

The exhibit, which has been in the works for about a year, draws heavily on the NYTM's extensive collection of objects related to the transit system—subway maps, yes, but also cartographic tools, renderings, and other ephemera. There are also items that might be familiar even to those who aren't transit wonks, like the New Yorker's 2001 "New Yorkistan" cover by Rick Meyerowitz and Maira Kalman.

New York Subway Guide, 1972; Unimark International for Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum

Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda's 1972 subway map.

"If we just said, 'This was this map, and that was that map,' it wouldn't be as rich and full a story," Bencivenga explains. Hence the inclusion of objects like a Pantone board showing all of the colors used by Unimark's Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda when they designed the now-iconic scheme used to denote the various subway lines. (And yes, Vignelli's once derided, and now beloved 1972 map is on view, too.)

The earliest maps in the exhibit date back to the 19th century, long before there was an underground rail system to speak of, but they help provide context for the development of the subway system. A map of the city's water table from the 1860s, for instance, sheds light on why subway stations in much of lower Manhattan are so shallow—there's simply not enough dry land to make the stations deeper than they are.

In another section, there are three maps of the individual BMT, IND, and IRT subway systems, which eventually merged to create the unified system we know today, that were created around the time of the 1939 World's Fair. "They're very specific about where they go, and absolutely silent about where the competition goes," explains Bencivenga. Each one emphasizes a particular geography (the IRT, for example, traveled along Manhattan's major avenues and had many stops in Bronx) that would later become subsumed into a larger system.

Nostrand/Interborough Rapid Transit map, 1939; Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum

A map of the Interborough Rapid Transit system from 1939.

The exhibit ends with the digital revolution as it applies to subway mapping; the MTA's newly launched app is available for visitors to browse, but there's also some context about how the agency finally prioritized technology. After 9/11 and, subsequently, Hurricane Sandy it became clear that the MTA's old way of disseminating information to customers—by updating subway maps with lines closed because of those catastrophic events, then printing and replacing them in stations as quickly as possible—would no longer work for its increasingly digital-first customer base.

"It's the first tell that we need to think differently about how we rely on maps," says Bencivenga. "Perhaps two-dimensional maps—the flat, paper, tactile map—is necessary, but not sufficient for where we are right now."

City of Women, 2016 by Rebecca Solnit, Cartographer Molly Ray, Research Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Jonathan Tarleton, Garnette Cadogan; Courtesy of the Artist.

"City of Women" from Rebecca Solnit's Nonstop Metropolis.

There's a little something for everyone: historical maps, works by well-known artists and creativs (Rebecca Solnit's "City of Women," from her 2016 book Nonstop Metropolis, is one of Bencivenga's favorites), massive renderings of 1960s New York, and more. All of these artifacts are interesting on their own, but when taken as a whole, they tell a compelling story about New York City—one that perfectly illustrates Bencivenga's point that subway maps are the key to both understanding and creating place.

"Navigating New York" is on view at the New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn through September 8, 2019.