A Painted Tunnel
The 191st Street train station for the 1 line connects Broadway and St. Nicholas through a tunnel several hundred feet long. The entrance to the tunnel on Broadway is vibrant and colorful, the diagonal symmetrical lines pointing to the tiled sign above that reads “I.R.T SUBWAY 191st ST. ENTRANCE.” There are graffiti tags scattered across the entrance, covering the art beneath it, but not overshadowing it.
The word “Welcome” is painted in large bubbly letters on the wall of the tunnel, greeting all commuters. As one continues walking, other messages are written across the walls, such as “Art is Life” and “Live Your Dreams.” Some of the messages are even written in Spanish, such as “Estoy Aqui” and “Bendición,” meaning “I am here” and “blessing,” respectively; these messages reflect the predominantly Latin neighborhood’s demographics.
Besides these kinds of messages, there are paintings of varying sizes and styles, as the art was done by a number of street artists. The paintings range anywhere from seemingly three-dimensional checkerboard patterns in a variety of colors, to purple and green forest imagery. The main entrance at the other end of the station, in St. Nicholas, is not as elaborately painted due to a lack of space, though it still features a similarly sized “Welcome” sign. Almost every inch of the 900-foot long tunnel is covered in paint from beginning to end, with the exception of the ceiling, and the different art styles and messages mirror each other only in vibrancy and size. The tunnel is a beautiful compilation of art which makes the long daily walk from Broadway to St. Nicholas at least a little more bearable than it would be otherwise, and it is a part of the neighborhood that people are proud of. However, this was not always the case.
A mere three years ago, the tunnel whose walls are now so creatively decorated was barren, poorly lit, littered with garbage, and infested with rats (The New York Times). The only people who appreciated the isolated space were graffiti taggers. It was not until early 2015, only two years ago, that the Department of Transportation and the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance “selected five artists [who were] [e]ach… given two 200-foot sections of the wall to paint, with geometric designs and ‘pop’ expected.” Before the beautification project was announced, the Department of Transportation was used to “repaint[ing] [the tunnel] an awful pale yellow shade” whenever it needed maintenance.
Turning the tunnel into a work of art, however, was not a new idea. In 2009, “the tunnel was the site of a transportation department art initiative,” but it did not have a lasting effect on the condition of the tunnel. When the Department of Transportation announced the beautification project in 2015, they “received 158 applications from around the world. The agency chose mostly local artists [and] each was paid $15,000.” Four of the five artists chosen were New York–based. Of those four artists, two of them were Latin, and of those two, one, Fernando Carlo Jr., continues to live in Washington Heights. The presence of a community-based Latino artist among the chosen five is yet another reason for the Latin commuters in the neighborhood to be proud of the artwork.
People from all parts of New York City come to Washington Heights to take pictures in the tunnel: there are often people posing in front of their favorite pieces, whereas prior to beautification, the tunnel was an unsafe space for all commuters because it was often desolate and lacked security cameras. The murals have turned an unpleasant part of folklife in Washington Heights to an interesting experience for commuters in the neighborhood. The mural does, however, reignite the age-old argument of what constitutes graffiti art, and the difference between unappealing street graffiti and graffiti that is praised as art.
The differences between the graffiti tags prior to 2015 and the post-beautification murals are simple: the graffiti tags were illegally painted in plain dark colors with a lot of space between the tags, and to most people, they were nothing more than unrecognizable patterns. On the other hand, the murals were legally painted, they had less negative space, easily recognizable patterns to all commuters, and they were painted in a variety of colors and shades. These differences could be where New Yorkers draw the line between street graffiti and urban art. Even the mural artists made distinctions between themselves and graffiti artists, with the exception of Fernando Carlo, who considers the art on the tunnel “graffiti art.”
-L
The Junction Journal 