Sunday, October 4, 2026 – Explore the Subway’s Hidden Gems: Beautiful Mosaics!

By admin

These Salvaged Relics in a

Brooklyn Subway Station

are the Ghostly Remains of

old New York Buildings

Ephemeral New York

Sunday, October 4, 2026

Issue # 1758

Dating back to 1824 when it was a free library founded specifically for tradesmen, the Brooklyn Museum is a magnificent repository of 140,000 pieces of art spanning ancient Egypt to contemporary America.

But beneath the museum at the grimy subway stop that takes you directly in front of the Beaux Arts building (which took 29 years to finally complete in 1926) are intentionally placed relics of another kind.

Inside the station is an underground mini-museum of salvaged relics—from corbels to rosettes to human faces with eyes that follow you as you move toward the platform—taken out of the rubble of demolished New York City buildings.

These 78 artifacts of terra cotta and stone are mounted on station walls with the care and precision of the mounted paintings inside the Museum’s halls and rooms.

What are they doing here, besides giving passengers a reason to hang out and experience art underground?

The relics come from the Brooklyn Museum’s longtime collection of ornamental architecture, and they were donated as part of the MTA’s Arts and Design program, which brings art installations to city subway stations.

“New mosaic designs were added to frame the objects and make connections with the architecture of the station,” states the MTA on a web page explaining the backstory of this underground exhibition.

The Brooklyn Museum provides a bit more context, stating that this “long-term installation” got its start in 2004 and was apparently planned to run through 2020, but the relics remain in what seems to be a permanent exhibit.

The MTA also explains that the Brooklyn Museum “has long served as a repository for ornamental architectural forms salvaged from significant buildings that were being demolished.”

I wish we knew which “significant buildings” these remnants came from, and if anyone recognizes them, let us know in the comments.

But for now, they’re the ghostly remains of anonymous city architecture of the 19th and early 20th centuries felled by the wrecking ball.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

WHERE IS THIS PLAQUE?
HINT: YOU SPEED BY IT ON THE Q’BORO BRIDGE
SEND RESPONSE TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

CREDIT

EPHEMERAL NEW YORK

JUDITH BERDY

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