1972 NYCTA New York Subway Guide

[Harry]

 

 

 

 

File Name: 1972 NYCTA New York Subway Guide

File Submitter: Harry

File Submitted: 28 May 2014

File Category: Subway Maps

 

Massimo Vignelli 1972 NYCTA New York Subway Guide

 

No sooner had the Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced a new map of the New York subway system on Aug. 7, 1972, than complaints flooded in. Many stations seemed to be in the wrong places. The water surrounding the city was colored beige, not blue. As for Central Park, it appeared to be almost square, rather than an elongated rectangle, three times bigger than the map suggested, and was depicted in a dreary shade of gray.

 

The map was, indeed, riddled with anomalies, but that was the point. Its designer, Massimo Vignelli, had sacrificed geographical accuracy for clarity by reinterpreting New York’s tangled labyrinth of subway lines as a neat diagram. Each station was shown as a dot and linked to its neighbors by color-coded routes running at 45- or 90-degree angles. Mr. Vignelli had used his design skills to tidy up reality.

 

Design buffs have always loved his map for its rigor and ingenuity. When the future graphic designer Michael Bierut made his first trip to New York in 1976, he took one home to Ohio as a souvenir. But many New Yorkers were outraged by what they saw as the misrepresentation of their city, while tourists struggled to relate Mr. Vignelli’s design to what they found above ground. In 1979, the M.T.A. bowed to public pressure by replacing his diagrammatic map with a geographical one.

 

Read more: New York Times

 

Click here to download this file

[CUNY2017]

Hi Harry,

 

Could you please let me know how I can download on the site.  I've tried repeatedly to download documents, such as the 1972 map above, but I only get the following message:  "Sorry, but you do not have access to any of the functions in our Download Manager."

 

Thank you in advance sir. 

[Lance]

It's likely due to your low post count. There is a post threshold you must hit before you can download any files stored on the forum. I'll PM Harry to see if we can do anything for you. In the meantime, welcome to the forums.