Subway history rests behind some not-so-old walls

This plaque sat behind the walls at Columbus Circle for over 100 years. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

In mid-October — Saturday the 13th, to be precise — I found myself on the uptown IRT platform at the Columbus Circle platform. Now, as anyone who ever travels through that station is well aware, the reconstruction of the station, due to last until 2009, makes walking through that station rather unpleasant. Dust, debris and closed staircases and passageways are everywhere.

But for New York City history buffs, certain parts of the renovation provide glimpses into the long-forgotten past of the city’s 103-year-old subway system. So there I was, three weeks ago, walking on the platform when I happened past a rather white wall that hadn’t been there the last time. I did a double-take, saw an interesting plaque and shot the picture on display above.

Clearly, I had discovered something — and an Art Nouveau something to boot — that had been there the last time I was in Columbus Circle, but I didn’t know it. This decorative plaque had been hidden over the decades by a new (and uglier) wall on the platform. This something was an old tile that read, “The tiles in this exhibit were the product of the American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited.” The American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited had its offices in Zanesville, Ohio, and New-York, New York, the hyphen serving as a throwback to another age.

Not knowing much about the tile, I turned to Kevin Walsh’s excellent Forgotten-NY site where Walsh had recently posted a piece on the history on display at Columbus Circle But he didn’t know much about the tile either. And then l I opened today’s New York Times to find this article about a tile long lost to history that dates from 1901. The American Encaustic Tiling Co. Limited, a 1935 victim of the Great Depression, installed this plaque as part of a larger exhibit. William Neuman writes:

It turns out that the 59th Street station was a kind of proving ground for the architects Heins & LaFarge in 1901, three years before the Interborough Rapid Transit Company trains began running through it.

“The architects used its walls as an art gallery, experimenting with decorative ideas in various colors of tiles and other materials,” Philip Ashforth Coppola wrote in “Silver Connections: A Fresh Perspective on the New York Area Subway Systems” (Four Oceans Press, 1984). “When the real decorating of Columbus Circle began, all these preliminary experiments were covered over and forgotten.” That is, until this fall.

The plaque and the tiles surrounding it, which were also experimental, are cemented into an 18-inch-thick original structural wall, said Paul J. Fleuranges, a New York City Transit vice president. That wall is being removed to provide more passenger space. Complicating an already complex job, Mr. Fleuranges said, “the historical find has presented project managers with another set of problems to solve.”

How cool is that? Hidden behind the formerly ugly and nondescript walls on the IRT platform at Columbus Circle was a laboratory for Heins and LaFarge, designers of the subway stations we see today.

Now, while the old white tiles and long-lost plaque are slated for removal, worry not about their fates. Fleuranges said that this plaque, an 106-year-old glimpse back into another era, will be carefully dismantled and retired to the Transit Museum for the enjoyment of transit buffs and NYC history mavens.

But until that date, Columbus Circle, for the price of a Metrocard swipe, is a living history exhibit. Straphangers of all stripes have the chance to take a look back at the subway as it once was in the early days of the Twentieth Century. So the next time you find yourself at 59th St. rushing through the subway, slow down, take a look at this plaque, and wonder what other long-forgotten pieces of subway history are hidden behind the walls of the New York City subway system.