by Laura Matiz

A new year represents an opportunity for new adventures. Armed with an umbrella for the rainy Monday after New Year's Day, my husband and I walked to the newly opened 72nd Street stop of the Second Avenue subway. The new line had started running the day before with Governor Cuomo leading the ceremonial first trip. 

A first impression one gets is how much deeper underground this line is than the Lexington Avenue trains. It is a long escalator ride down. After a quick turn off the escalators, the upper level of the station is on the other side of the turnstiles. That upper level is a well-lit space with high ceilings. There are stairs and escalators to track level along the center. The upper levels have been the talk of the opening because of the public art installations.

The mosaics on the 72nd Street station are a treat. In fact, many of the people at the station were looping around viewing the mosaics as if at a museum. Vik Muniz, the artist behind the mosaics at 72nd, features New Yorkers in whimsical poses as if waiting or running for the train, including a self-portrait with the artist running after papers spilling from his briefcase. 

After stopping at two other stations, 96th Street and 86th Street, we exited with a sense of joy and pride. Like many curious New Yorkers, we took many pictures, some shared here. We congratulated a number of  MTA employees that were on hand with information and pamphlets. We felt a need to give someone credit for the undertaking and the accomplishment, for the opening of a new subway line is a once-in-a-lifetime event notwithstanding that it had been in the works for more than a lifetime. ​

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— 12/28/2014: NYC Underground: New Transit Projects

by Laura Matiz 

The Real Deal recently ran an article on this map of New York. The map, from around the turn of the 20th Century, is exquisitely detailed by the illustrator, Josef Klemm. His map is a bird's-eye view of the city before the rise of the skyscrapers. The map is meticulous enough that one can spend hours focusing on the details. Below is a screen grab of Central Park and surroundings. 

Maps like these are enjoyable to explore and many such maps are accessible from the expansive David Rumsey Map Collection. Map enthusiasts are likely to be aware of this source, but if you are not, it is worth checking out. The online collection houses over 150,000 maps.

For example, doing a quick search for New York City maps, I found this map from 1926 by Charles Farrow titled,   "A Map of the Wondrous Isle of Manhattan." 

Below, I share some highlights. First, the map's medallion has such nice touches, including the warning, "The scale is all askew," which is true.  An elevated train circles the medallion's top border and a subway is below ground on the bottom border. The couples from the Roaring Twenties add to a feeling of the Jazz Age. This is the kind of map that could be used as the background for an opening sequence for a movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Another detail is the northwest corner showing the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Columbia University. It also shows the infamous S (for Suicide) Curve of the Ninth Avenue El (see photo). 

I hope you take some time to look around these two maps and the full Rumsey collection, just make sure you have a few hours. 

by Laura Matiz 

The Water Tank Project aims to raise awareness about that most critical of resources that we sometimes take for granted: water. H2O. There are 17,000 tanks in the city, hinting at the abundance we enjoy, but that is not the case in many parts of the world. Founded by Mary Jordan, an artist and filmmaker, The Water Tank Project wraps artwork created by acclaimed artists around the iconic water tanks of the New York City skyline. This project caught my attention a couple of years ago when I was introduced to it by Brook Christopher, the official photographer for The Water Tank Project, and I have been following the project since. 

My photo safari began when Brook Christopher – who has been documenting the process since inception – asked me to accompany her on a mission to capture a couple of the covered tanks in lower Manhattan. Her task was to photograph "Gush" by Marilyn Minter and "Psychogeographies" by Dustin Yellen, shown below.