You've seen them one by one, admiring the handsomest in glimpses between closing subway doors or from the corner of your eye as you hotfoot it out of the station, but — as far as we know — you've never been able to view them all in one place before.
Now you can click through images of almost all the subway signs in Manhattan and Brooklyn, thanks to an online gallery assembled by Brooklyn-based freelance art director and designer Adam Chang.
Credit: Adam Chang
Chang finished digitizing his pictures of Brooklyn's 157 subway station signs and relaunched his website, which had hitherto covered Manhattan's 119 stations, on Tuesday. (We're still anxiously anticipating the G line, though, which is experiencing bugs on the site, according to Chang).
Altogether, the NY Train Project has taken him 19 subway card swipes and 43 hours of riding the subway and waiting for trains.
The site allows users to scroll through images of the signs — some made of mosaics, some printed, some in serif fonts, and others in sans-serif — along the subway lines on which they appear.
Of his motivation for the undertaking, Chang writes on his site, "About a year ago while waiting for the 6 train at the Bleecker station, I began to notice the intricate details of the carefully placed tiles in the station sign, which led me to noticing other station signs and how they were all different, infused with the personality of the neighborhood. I decided that I wanted to share this with others."
Still to come are images of all the subway signage in the Bronx and Queens.
If you wondered what Chang's favorite sign in Brooklyn is, he told Brownstoner it's "probably the Borough Hall station on the 5."
