NY Train Project Brooklyn StationsNY Train Project Brooklyn Stations

Brooklyn’s subway art, gone virtual.

Williamsburg-based freelance art director and designer Adam Chang recently completed his digitization of every Brooklyn subway station mosaic. Brownstoner got the chance to talk to Adam about the project, his inspirations, and the G train.

To create the graphics, Chang photographs every station’s sign, then recreates it in Adobe Illustrator.

According to Chang, it took 10 MetroCard swipes and 23 hours of riding to cover every one of Brooklyn’s 157 stations.

He finished the project on Tuesday and relaunched his website, NY Train Project. The site makes art out of art, creating electronic representations of physical subway signage from the borough’s stations. Chang completed the Manhattan portion in April 2014 and has placeholders for Queens and the Bronx.

NY Train Project Brooklyn Stations

Brownstoner: What inspired you to start this project?
Chang: In a quick recap, I got started on this project two years ago when I noticed the Bleecker station sign while waiting for the 6 train. From there I basically started to pay attention to the signs and thought it would be interesting to create an online gallery and experience that mimics the New York subway system. Last year I launched the site with all the Manhattan stations and this year I just completed all the stops for Brooklyn.

How was documenting the Brooklyn stations different from Manhattan?
Brooklyn was definitely a different experience. For one, a lot of the stations I had never been to before so it was a lot of discovering and exploring new places. In Manhattan, prior to creating this site, I had basically already been to every station at some point. Also, for Brooklyn, especially on the stops further away, it seemed like there was either a lot of people or basically just a handful of people at times waiting at each station.

NY Train Project Brooklyn Stations

Do you have a favorite Brooklyn stop?
My favorite mosaic sign in Brooklyn is probably the Borough Hall station on the 5.

Why isn’t the G train currently included on your website?
The G train was running but there was something buggy on that line so I took it down and my developer is working on it. It should hopefully be up in a day or so. I guess it’s similar to the real G train in that it’s always down.

Did you pick up on any general trends that differentiate Brooklyn subway stops?
One that pops up right away is that there’s definitely a lot more above ground stops. Overall, there are fewer mosaics, but more than I expected. Also, the stations that have mosaics seemed to mostly use serif-style fonts, whereas in Manhattan there was more of a mix between serif and sans serif.

NY Train Project Brooklyn StationsNY Train Project Brooklyn Stations

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[Images: NY Train Project]

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. I remember so many of these signs from the decade I lived in Brooklyn (1981-91). I’m in the Boston area now and these mosaics, especially the really elegant old ones, make me feel nostalgic. I also love the Borough Hall Station and Clark Street (I lived in the Heights and worked downtown. There are two ceramic murals in the Clark Street station that were created in 1981/82 by two artists paid with federal CETA funds. CETA was started by President Carter and Reagan cut it when he cut lots of other arts funding. Anyway, I wrote a freelance article about the murals that ran in the Daily News. One of the artists was named Johan and he put a self portrait in the stained glass of the historic church he painted. This artist was a neighbor of the Patz family in Soho. Etan Patz, the boy who was kidnapped almost 35 years ago and never found, was a playmate of his son. They used to walk to school together. Johan had a poster about Etan on the back of his van. I’m sharing old history.

    Thanks for this marvelous collection. I have a particular interest in trains and created a photo exhibit in college called New York City Underground: a Photo Exhibit with Sound. Some of the photos were quite startling. Good old TriX, nice close grainy shots taken with a 50 mm, which I developed and printed myself. One guy and an androgynous looking girl with him stared right into the lense. He was wearing a green fatigue military jacket with a lot of pockets that gave you the impression they were filled with drugs. No one ever said anything to me about me taking photos and no one turned away. I sometimes rode around with a recorder and professional microphone (my friend’s equipment), recording environmental sounds. I got some funny stuff. I’m laughing, because people looked at me, but they must have thought I was from the news. This was 1978 and I am cracking up thinking about it. I think I got away with this because I was so young, slim and had blonde hair and blue eyes. No one tried to grab my camera or the microphone.

    My persona added an element to the exhibit for those who knew me — that I had gotten so close to and wasn’t afraid to photograph people like the creepy guy with the military jacket.

  2. I remember so many of these signs from the decade I lived in Brooklyn (1981-91). I’m in the Boston area now and these mosaics, especially the really elegant old ones, make me feel nostalgic. I also love the Borough Hall Station and Clark Street (I lived in the Heights and worked downtown. There are two ceramic murals in the Clark Street station that were created in 1981/82 by two artists paid with federal CETA funds. CETA was started by President Carter and Reagan cut it when he cut lots of other arts funding. Anyway, I wrote a freelance article about the murals that ran in the Daily News. One of the artists was named Johan and he put a self portrait in the stained glass of the historic church he painted. This artist was a neighbor of the Patz family in Soho. Etan Patz, the boy who was kidnapped almost 35 years ago and never found, was a playmate of his son. They used to walk to school together. Johan had a poster about Etan on the back of his van. I’m sharing old history.

    Thanks for this marvelous collection. I have a particular interest in trains and created a photo exhibit in college called New York City Underground: a Photo Exhibit with Sound. Some of the photos were quite startling. Good old TriX, nice close grainy shots taken with a 50 mm, which I developed and printed myself. One guy and an androgynous looking girl with him stared right into the lense. He was wearing a green fatigue military jacket with a lot of pockets that gave you the impression they were filled with drugs. No one ever said anything to me about me taking photos and no one turned away. I sometimes rode around with a recorder and professional microphone (my friend’s equipment), recording environmental sounds. I got some funny stuff. I’m laughing, because people looked at me, but they must have thought I was from the news. This was 1978 and I am cracking up thinking about it. I think I got away with this because I was so young, slim and had blonde hair and blue eyes. No one tried to grab my camera or the microphone.

    My persona added an element to the exhibit for those who knew me — that I had gotten so close to and wasn’t afraid to photograph people like the creepy guy with the military jacket.

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