Summary: What is a true New York City icon The Statue of Liberty, of course. And the Empire State Building. Lets not forget the Brooklyn Bridge. But if you ask anyone at the Transit Museum what their favorite city icon is, youll often get an unusual response the famous Astor Place subway station beaver.Every 15 feet along the walls of the south end of both platforms are blue faience plaques featuring a beige beaver busy gnawing on a tree. Architects Heins amp LaFarge designed these ceramics to commemorate John Jacob Astor, for whom Astor Place is named. Astor was Americas first millionaire, thanks in large part to his lucrative business dealing in beaver pelts. Astor started trading furs with the Indians in the 1780s, and opened his own shop in Manhattan. Soon, his furs from as far north as Canada and the west coast of the continent were being sold to Europe and Asia. Additionally, Astor was an early Manhattan real estate speculator. So, fittingly, a city street bears his name, and a reminder of the beaver pelts that helped make his fortune adorns its subway station.While the beavers are unique to the subway system, the borders of their faience plaques are not. The ornate green border can also be seen at the 50th Street IRT station on the number 1 line. These plaques have a five oh in place of the beaver. Both were made by Grueby Faience Company of Boston and feature their famous matte green glaze. But the beaver is not the only distinguishing element of the station. Its difficult to miss the large KMart store entrance on the north end of the downtown station platform. Because the subway was built in an alreadycrowded city, it was necessary to work around existing structures. The building that now houses KMart was built decades earlier. As the station was built, so was this building housing the Philadelphiabased Wanamakers department store. Heins amp LaFarge added additional BeauxArts details to the station. If you look on the uptown platform, two stone lintels sit above doorways that originally led to public restrooms. You will note the words quotMENquot and quotWOMENquot are carved into the stone. Stone rosettes surround the words. These rosettes were used by Heins and LaFarge to ornament both stone and ceramics, and can be seen in a wide variety of stations. Near this entrance and on the northern most section of the uptown platform, is graphic designer Milton Glazers 1986 untitled art work. Porcelain enamel in geometric patterns and bright colors adorn the platform walls. Glaser, most famous for designing the quotI Love New Yorkquot logo, created artwork that complements the existing historic station elements, but still makes a bold and modern statement. Glaser described his approach as, quotbasically a variation on the existing forms. By extracting fragments of the motifs on the tile panels, enlarging their scale, and placing these pieces in a random pattern, they take on the appearance of a puzzle.quot Another important modern addition to the station reflects its historic fabric. If you exit the station on the uptown side, youll come up in a very Victorian looking cast iron structure. This is a replica of the kiosks that Heins amp LaFarge designed for the original subway stations. Those kiosks were modeled after the quotkushksquot of the Budapest metro that opened in 1896. The original kiosks were manufactured by Hecla Iron Works in Brooklyn. The 149 kiosks erected in New York came in four sizes, depending on the available sidewalk space. They were easily recognizable to people on crowded streets entrance and exit kiosks had different style roofs. Kiosks provided protection from bad weather and incorporated a pipe system to bring fresh air into the stations. Eventually all of the kiosks were removed they clogged the already overcrowded sidewalks and blocked the views of automobiles. Its only at Astor Place that you get a real sense of how New Yorkers entered and exited the subway in 1904.
