[Net-Gold] A Cultural History of the New York City Subway

[David P. Dillard]

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1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2cDate: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:14:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Sue Fraser <xcsc...@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Net-...@yahoogroups.com
To: Net-Gold <Net-...@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Net-Gold] A Cultural History of the New York City Subway



A Cultural History of the New York City Subway

by Randy Shaw‚
Nov. 24‚ 2009 net


During the recent Bay Bridge closure, there was much talk about how San
Francisco Bay Area residents needed to become less car-dependent.
Overlooked was the fact that the region’s many transportation systems
collectively provide neither the 24-hour coverage nor geographic
breadth to enable people to give up cars. In other words, the Bay
Area’s public transit system is not in the same league as New York
City’s legendary subway system, whose cultural and artistic
significance is the subject of Tracy Fitzpatrick’s recent book, Art and the Subway: New York Underground.
Fitzpatrick traces the subway from its opening in 1904 to the present,
1;2c1;2crevealing how artists, writers, photographers and other cultural
workers took advantage of the subway’s public and democratic milieu to
forge their visions of society. She uncovers many surprising facts,
such as the long history of subway graffiti, the use of guards to cram
people into packed trains, and the ways in which artists captured the
racial contradictions among a subway ridership that confounded
traditional assumptions about the Melting Pot.

Although the New York City subway has entranced the
public for over 100 years, Tracy Fitzpatrick’s book provides many new
insights into its cultural and artistic significance. These insights
begin with the fact that the system was originally designed under the
elaborate City Beautiful architectural style, but soon took on a much
different appearance when the far more simpler Arts and Craft style
became dominant. I was also very surprised to learn that much of the
subway was constructed underground while street traffic continued; the
book contains photos showing how this was done.

The 1920’s and 30’s: The Golden Age of Subway Art

While Fitzpatrick traces subway art through Keith Haring and the
graffiti writers of the 1980’s, I found the subway’s cultural
contributions in the 1920’s and 1930’s the most compelling. Reginald
Marsh, best known for his paintings of working-class visitors to Coney
Island, also created cartoons and paintings for a newspaper series,
“Subway Sunbeams.” Fitzpatrick reproduces many of Marsh’s cartoons,
which address such issues as the extreme crowding which typified
subways in the 1920’s – hence the guards to jam people in – and the
often suppressed racial dynamic. In an era when immigrants were said to
be “melting” their foreign backgrounds and becoming new Americans,
Marsh showed that African-Americans stood out from other riders, not
being allowed to “assimilate” into the crowd with fellow riders.



http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=7584



The entire article can be read at the above URL.



Sincerely,
Sue Fraser
xcsc...@yahoo.com