Last Stop on This Train

To anyone who has lived in New York City for more than 5 minutes the subway map isn't iconic, it's whatever word means "more than iconic". It was created in the 1970's by Michael Hertz, who just died:

There was already a system map (or “diagram,” as some preferred to call it), a colorful Modernist thing created by the Italian designer Massimo Vignelli and introduced in 1972. It was fun to look at — the Museum of Modern Art in New York has that version in its collection — but few users loved it, in part because the Vignelli map didn’t relate the underground to the aboveground.

“It was the 1970s,” Arline L. Bronzaft, a psychologist who worked on Mr. Hertz’s replacement map, told Newsday in 2004. “People were fearful of going on the subways. We wanted people to use the map to see the sights of New York.”

The map that Mr. Hertz’s firm came up with included streets, neighborhoods and other surface reference points. And it depicted the city and its signature elements like Central Park and the waterways in a fashion more reflective of reality — the park wasn’t square, as on the earlier map, and the water wasn’t beige.

The new map was a group effort. An M.T.A. committee led by John Tauranac studied various designs and gathered input. A Japanese painter and designer working for Mr. Hertz, Nobuyuki Siraisi, rode every subway line with his eyes closed so that he could better feel the curves in the routes. (One of the complaints about the Vignelli diagram was that it was done entirely in straight lines.)

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “don't you have a bunch of subway memories?"

Sigh. Yes I have, dear readers. Yes I have.