The 63rd Street Station
Jean Shin

“Elevated”

Elevated uses archival photographs of the 2nd and 3rd Avenue Elevated train to create compositions in ceramic tile, glass mosaic, and laminated glass. At the 3rd Avenue escalator, the view is filled with ceramic tile depicting construction beams and the cranes that dismantled the El in the 1940s. At the 3rd Avenue mezzanine, a mosaic reveals the sky where the train had previously been present. The platform level features semitransparent and reflective materials showing vintage scenes of the neighborhood.

Shin is certainly the least known of the artists chosen for the Second Avenue Line project. But some of her previous work — making monumental, melancholy pieces from found, castoff objects makes her perfect to fill this kind of unique space.

For “Elevated,” she looked into the past that was supposed to present New York the Second Avenue subway generations ago. That led her to illustrate the demolition of the Second Avenue and Third Avenue elevated lines in the 1940s and 1950s.

She researched the archives at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn and at the New-York Historical Society and used photographs she found to create dioramas in mosaic and glass. They are based on images of everyday riders and pedestrians from the 1920s through the 1940s. Shin also plays with geometric shots of elevated girders being dismantled.

“We’re such a youth culture,” said Ms. Shin. “I think it’s nice to have people of the past among us…. I was also imagining New Yorkers way back then feeling, ‘Hey, we’re finally going to get the Second Avenue subway!’”

Indeed we have!

We hope you all get the chance to see this “new” New York treasure soon.

(In the meantime you can look through our Gallery of Second Street Line Photos for more)

We’ll see you April as Marsha & I make a journey to admire the Jewels of the Adriatic: Croatia & Slovenia….