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The Art of New York's Subways
Lorraine B. Diehl, the wife of ABC Radio entertainment correspondent Bill Diehl, writes about the rise and fall and rebirth of the city's subterranean transportation in "Subways: The Tracks That Built New York City," published by Clarkson Potter. The following is an excerpt explaining how things got so bad, and some of the good things you might find.
If you want to know anything about New York City, about how its citizens are coping with life in their metropolis, you'll have to ride the subway.
Down below the streets of the city, you'll get an instant reading of how New York City is doing. When former New York Times columnist Russell Baker compared his daily descent into the subway to a "torero confronting the bull," he was writing about the out-of-control time in the 1970s when youth gangs roamed the subways, seemingly impervious to the efforts of the Transit Authority police to keep them in check.
Crime in the subways had gotten so bad, in 1979, it spawned the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime-fighting group led by the charismatic Curtis Sliwa. Donning red berets, they became a strong presence, occasionally making citizen's arrests.
What was happening in the subways was part of what was happening all over the city.
Back in 1904, the city that welcomed the first subway was solvent and optimistic. The new, privately operated system carried New Yorkers into the 20th century and even had a dash of glamour. Plaques and mosaics adorned each station to help identify the stations with "word pictures" for the growing immigrant population.
Gradually, however, those eye-catching plaques were made invisible by dirt and indifference. By the 1920s, the subway was simply an inexpensive, dependable means to get around. The five-cent fare couldn't be beat, but old subway cars got older and shabbier.
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