Friday, November 6, 2020 – The man who designed the subway stations

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6,  2020

The

202nd  Edition

From Our Archives

JOSEPH SQUIRE VICKERS

THE MAN WHO BUILT
OUR SUBWAY

The story of Squire Vickers, the man behind the distinctive look of the New York City subway By KERI BLAKINGER NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | JUN 30, 2016 AT 8:15 AM

Squire Joseph Vickers (seen in his Class of 1900 Cornell yearbook) oversaw subway design for more than three decades. (Cornell University)

You’ve probably never heard of him, but an eccentric man from Rockland County is one of the people most responsible for the look and feel of the New York City subway system. Squire Vickers, the system’s chief architect for more than three decades, oversaw the design of more stations than any other individual — and he left his stamp on the system, with signature tile station plaques and a distinct Arts and Crafts design that permeates the system to this day.

To understand Vickers’ style, though, first it’s necessary to understand what came before him. When the first subway opened in 1904, it had been designed by ecclesiastical architects — church designers. Today, the subway might seem like the most unholy of places, but the system’s first architects — MIT grads George L. Heins and C. Grant LaFarge — were best known for winning the competition to design the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

In 1901, according to the New York Times, they snagged the job as chief architects for the first subway line, which would run from City Hall up to 145th St. The City Hall station was the crown jewel of the Interborough Rapid Transit subway line, featuring elegant Tiffany skylights and ornate Gruby faience tiles.

Like the other 1904 stations, City Hall was influenced by the Beaux Arts movement, a Parisian neoclassical style of architecture.

“That was an aesthetic that architects at the time were embracing,” MTA Arts & Design Director Sandra Bloodworth told the News.

“They were also evoking the City Beautiful movement showcased at the Chicago World’s Fair, with the hope that if you created these great public spaces it would bring out the higher civic nature of the people.”

Heins and LaFarge stations are often identifiable by those plaques. If the plaques feature the depth of ornate bas relief, you’re probably in a 1904 station. Those early Heins and LaFarge stations are filled with swoops and swirls and architectural flourishes. Also, they’re only on the numbered lines — the lettered lines were built later.

Squire Vickers — who undoubtedly has the coolest name in New York transit history — was an eccentric painter who graduated from Cornell University, according to the New York Times. He lived north of the city— in a Rockland County town called Grand View-on-Hudson — in an Arts and Crafts-style home he designed. The interior of his artist’s retreat was decorated with tiles, much like an upstate subway outpost.

When he wasn’t masterminding the look of the then-biggest underground transit system in the world, Vickers passed the hours painting and writing Romantic poetry. Though he was not a New Yorker, he was a regular subway rider; his daily commute to Manhattan included jaunts on the train, ferry and subway. When he took over as the system’s chief architect, he brought his own sensibilities to the system.

When Vickers took over subway design, he went for an easier-to-maintain Arts and Crafts style that relied heavily on colorful tiled mosaics.

“He was an architect and then he became the primary architect for station design beginning in 1908 till the 1940s,” transit historian and “From a Nickel to a Token” author Andy Sparberg explained. “His stations encompass two types.” First, he oversaw the stations influenced by the Arts and Crafts style. They are less ornate — and easier to maintain — than their Beaux Arts predecessors. Gone were the three-dimensional bas reliefs and swirling flourishes, as curves gave way to straight lines and faiences to vividly colored mosaic tiles and geometric designs.

The Rector St. subway stop features Vickers’ work, as do many of the other stops south of Times Square. (Gryffindor/Wikimedia Commons)

Although some of Vickers’ affection for the simplicity of Arts and Crafts style was undoubtedly about aesthetics and ethos, some of it was probably about dollars and cents. “With Heins and LaFarge,” Transit Museum curator Carissa Amash told the Times in 2007, “there was a point at which it was like, ‘Hey guys, you’re going to have to rein in the costs,’ but with Vickers it was pretty much a tight budget from the get-go.” Some of the most striking examples of his work can be found on many of the local stops south of Times Square — Rector St., Franklin St., Houston St. The geometric mosaic bands along the walls of the Times Square complex, the City Hall mosaics at the R train’s City Hall stop and the train mosaics at Grand Central are all vivid examples of Vickers’ work.

Vickers oversaw the design of the 14 St.-Union Square subway station, which features this tile design. (Keri Blakinger/New York Daily News)

Over time, though, his style shifted. When the city decided to erect the Independent Subway System — better known as the IND — Vickers imbued the new stations with a noticeably different aesthetic. “When the city began building IND stations opening in 1932, they adapted Machine Age design, a variant of Art Deco,” Sparberg explained. Machine Age sensibilities were more streamlined and bolder, evoking a feeling of modernity and precision. As that influence took over, the station name tiles shifted to sans-serif fonts and solid colors. The old IND stations — which correspond to lettered lines after H — feature austere mosaic name tiles with sharp edges and bold colors. They’re vibrant and lively — but straight-to-the-point and all business.

The IND stations have a distinctly different tiling theme from the stations that came before them. (Youngking11/Wikimedia Commons) Although Vickers would have overseen the IND station design, Bloodworth cautioned that it’s not certain how hands-on he was in the bold tiling that defines the look of the IND platforms today. “I’ve always wondered who really did that because it’s so different from his sensibilities,” she said. Above all, his sensibilities focused on a fundamental belief that better art made for better people. “If we start out to find that which is best in art, it will permeate the entire life and rule of action,” he once wrote.

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Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
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Edited by Melanie Colter  and Deborah Dorff
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The story of Squire Vickers, the man behind the distinctive look of the New York City subway  

By KERI LAKINGER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |(C)
JUN 30, 2016 AT 8:15 AM

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