One-Track Mind: Drawing the New York Subway

163 Pages·2018·54.293 MB·English

by  Ezra Bookstein, Jonathan Lethem, Jeremy Workman

ONE-TRACK MIND

ONE-TRACK MIND
DRAWING THE NEW YORK SUBWAY
Drawings by
PHILIP ASHFORTH COPPOLA
Foreword by
JONATHAN LETHEM
Edited by
EZRA BOOKSTEIN & JEREMY WORKMAN
PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS
NEW YORK
Published by No part of this book may be used or reproduced Library of Congress
Princeton Architectural Press in any manner without written permission from Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A McEvoy Group company the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Names: Coppola, Philip Ashforth, author, artist.
202 Warren Street | Workman, Jeremy, editor. | Bookstein, Ezra,
Hudson, New York 12534 Every reasonable attempt has been made to editor. | Lethem, Jonathan, writer of foreword.
Visit our website at www.papress.com identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions Title: One-track mind : drawing the New York
will be corrected in subsequent editions. All efforts subway / drawings by Philip Ashforth Coppola ;
© 2018 Princeton Architectural Press have been made to ensure factual accuracy; any Jeremy Workman and Ezra Bookstein, editors ;
All rights reserved inaccuracies that remain are the responsibility foreword by Jonathan Lethem.
of the authors. Description: First edition. | New York : Princeton
Princeton Architectural Press is a leading publisher Architectural Press, 2018. | Contains material
in architecture, design, photography, landscape, Editor: Nina Pick adapted from Silver Connections by Philip
and visual culture. We create fine books and Design: Jan Haux Ashforth Coppola.
stationery of unsurpassed quality and production Typesetting: Paul Wagner Identifiers: LCCN 2017037147 | ISBN 9781616896744
values. With more than one thousand titles (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781616897314 (epub, mobi)
published, we find design everywhere and in the Special thanks to: Ryan Alcazar, Janet Behning, Subjects: LCSH: Subways—New York (State)—New
most unlikely places. Nolan Boomer, Abby Bussel, Benjamin English, York. | Subways—Decoration—New York (State)—
Jan Cigliano Hartman, Susan Hershberg, New York.
All artwork by Philip Ashforth Coppola. The text Kristen Hewitt, Lia Hunt, Valerie Kamen, Classification: LCC TF847.N5 C582 2018 | DDC
contains material adapted from Silver Connections Jennifer Lippert, Sara McKay, Eliana Miller, 741.973—dc23
by Philip Ashforth Coppola © 2013. Reprinted with Wes Seeley, Rob Shaeffer, Sara Stemen, LC record available at https://lccn.loc
permission of the author. Marisa Tesoro, and Joseph Weston of .gov/2017037147
Princeton Architectural Press
—Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Jonathan Lethem
7
INTRODUCTION
11
THE BIRTH OF THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY
15
MAPS
19
STATION DRAWINGS
25
SKETCHBOOK
143
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · 155 BIOGRAPHIES · 157

FOREWORD
I
remember one day, during my I remember, also during high A train, one in which he successfully
short-lived participation in the school, my friends and I finding fresh transported thousands of New Yorkers
Music and Art High School soccer Keith Haring chalk drawings on the to their destinations with barely a
team, going north from Manhattan empty black billboard frames in the hitch.
after school, the direction I’d never 135th Street station and smearing I remember the first time I really
otherwise go, to Van Cortlandt Park them with our hands and laughing noticed the Astor Place beaver
in the Bronx for practice. (I lived in about it. We saw the Haring drawings mosaic, like so many before me have
Brooklyn and traveled to Harlem all through the system those days, done and are likely doing right at this
every day for school on the A train.) and we resented him a little for it, in moment, and marveled at New York’s
We were having dinner that night with our brat-punk way; we resented him capacity to persistently disgorge
friends who lived in Staten Island, simply for having been there before secrets hidden in plain sight, lost
and it occurred to me, on the subway us, for seeming to be everywhere. histories in ruins and still a part of the
headed south, that if I diverted to I remember Darius McCollum, who (barely) functioning infrastructure,
Queens on my way to the dinner spent his teenage years and beyond the eccentric system of public trains,
and dropped in on my grandmother impersonating NYC transit workers which had actually arisen as two
in Sunnyside, I’d have hit all five and illegally driving trains, and got rival private rail systems, and which
boroughs in one day. This act may himself sent to Rikers Island for doing everyone took for granted as if it had
be routine for marathon runners and so. And I remember Keron Thomas, grown there, a natural formation, and
mayoral candidates, but it gave me a who at sixteen practiced for months which most people only complain
little shiver of completist satisfaction for a single remarkable three-hour about or silently endure. I remember
to do it. joyride as a fake motorman on the trying to conjugate that beaver mosaic
 7
with the name of the station and with creature from “The Burrow,” record- talk back, whether in a whisper or a
the portion of the city above—I was ing and tracing that which speaks to scream, to the great secret system
surely visiting to go to some Astor him at a level deeper than most could of the subways. For the New York
Place club, or teenage party—and imagine? Coppola, whose hand and subways are like a magical nervous
failing. Could there actually have been breath and presence are like those system, or a secret, vastly distributed
a beaver dam at that site in living of a dutiful ghost, so that he passes spare brain, which every serious New
human memory? And if so, why would largely unseen, claiming no glory for Yorker understands has the power
it be commemorated in the station’s himself, only enlivening and illumina- to speak to him or her in a mythic
tilework? ting the darkening record, the accom- voice, even if one chooses to ignore
You may ask, now, why on earth plishments of men who passed before it. It might be a great burden, this
would I compare these inadequate our time and who were likely, even listening; we might only choose to do
and fitful and irreverent and even willing, to be forgotten? Why, I might it momentarily, or to call it to a halt
illegal expressions of surplus fascina- as well compare him to a graffiti artist! after a certain unbearable intensity
tion with the New York subway system Well, I’ll do that too. In one sense, has been reached, and cry “Enough!”
with the titanic accomplishments of sure, a graffiti artist is Coppola’s exact Well, here might be a good-enough
the great self-appointed scholar and opposite—a defacer, a proclaimer, an description of Phil Coppola: he is the
copyist of the system’s decorations, impulse artist. Yet, like some of the voice’s greatest listener, the mystery’s
Philip Ashforth Coppola? Coppola, other forms of subway obsessives I’ve greatest detective. He is the man
who with saintly intensity has bur- mentioned, I think the NYC graffiti who never cried “Enough!” Like a
rowed into the fading archives, dwel- artist’s desire arises from a similar character from Borges, his impossible
ling there for decades now like Kafka’s place, from the urge to find a way to Silver Connections project proposes
8  ONE-TRACK MIND