Manhattan Studio News: Underground Space

Farm­ing in Aban­doned Sub­way Sta­tions: Week 2, Ses­sion 3 — Tues­day, June 16, 2009

Cross-section on 6th Avenue at 33rd Street, source.

Con­sid­er­ing how much we think we know about city, it often takes an out­sider to come and show us some­thing about it that is new to us. Sean Taber, an archi­tect who recently moved to New York from Los Angles showed his ongo­ing under­ground study of aban­doned, closed sub­ways sta­tions in New York. In the tra­di­tion of per­form­ing an intense, per­haps slightly for­bid­den kind of urban arche­ol­ogy as an ana­lyt­i­cal way to under­stand some­thing about the com­plex “urb” of urban­ism, Sean showed a col­lec­tion of all closed under­ground sub­way sta­tions he could find in this first gen­er­a­tion research project.

What is most appeal­ing about this is not only the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of a Man­hat­tan for­eigner with a dark, dank side of the under­belly of this city, but also the attrac­tion to left-over spaces and the ambi­tion to fig­ure out how to save them and re-use them as new spaces. This dou­ble and con­tra­dic­tory view is in some way the curse of the archi­tect – there is on the one hand an intense romance as a hun­gry voyeur peer­ing through the tiny cut out win­dow of the con­struc­tion fence into the city in flux – urb fluxus – the city of con­struc­tion and the city of decay and ruin – and on the other hand with our Machi­avel­lian curse to always try both to con­quer ter­ri­tory and then to make it – and even us — bet­ter, to always improve the city, the world with great jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. The face of the Roman­tic with the Mask of the Doc­tor. One has to won­der if this still works? As Wal­lace Har­ri­son said to me when I started Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine in 1980, he gazed south out of his new office win­dow in Rock­e­feller; he was 85, and said “…but Andy it looks like a good name but it was a bad idea and we failed.”

Sean Taber’s study touches on these kinds of ques­tions through which this research of arche­o­log­i­cal urban­ism can be directed as much more tan­gi­ble evi­dence for an urban prac­tice that that still lin­ger­ing, unformed Man­hat­tan Man­i­festo started in the book, Deliri­ous New York, which once pub­lished was never taken beyond car­toon and car­i­ca­ture par­tic­u­larly back in the city. The Prada store, mostly a sub­ter­ranean yawn, is so far away from Deliri­ous New York. It is Dead Seri­ous Shop­ping — fur­ther than far far away from the Romance with the Under­belly, the heat and heart of Man­hat­tanism – raw, wild, rough, sweaty, dan­ger­ous, sexy and not shiny space.

Bergen Street Sta­tion – View of aban­doned lower plat­form; www.nycsubway.org

42nd Street Sta­tion – View of aban­doned lower plat­form; www.nycsubway.org

AM:  Why are you inter­ested in doing a project underground?

ST:  It is a type of resid­ual space with which I am unfa­mil­iar. I come from a city, Los Ange­les, where going under­ground is a rare occur­rence. Major modes of trans­porta­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and power all exist at grade along the top of the ground. Very few homes have base­ments. As a result, most Angeli­nos move through the city with­out any con­cep­tion of what kind of world exists beneath their feet.

AM:  And now that you are in New York you’ve decided to explore what lies beneath?

ST:  I want to explore what has been for­got­ten and bring it back to our aware­ness for dis­cus­sion and solu­tion. The aban­doned sub­way sta­tions are a good start.

AM:  What has your pre­lim­i­nary research into these sta­tions revealed?

ST:  Two things: First, some of the sta­tions such City Hall (IRT) and the 18^th Street Sta­tion have won­der­fully detailed inte­ri­ors. While I under­stand why these sta­tions were aban­doned (they could no longer ser­vice the longer, mod­ern trains), it seems that the city could take much more pride in them as historical, architectural arti­facts. Sec­ond, there is a large amount of real estate below the city which is being under­uti­lized. Most of the sta­tions are being used just for stor­age. Given their mas­sive foot­prints it would seem pru­dent to trans­form these sta­tions by insert­ing dynamic pro­grams for every­day use.

AM:  Do you have any ideas?

ST:  I’ve toyed with a few, but the one that keeps com­ing up is turn­ing the sta­tions into par­tially sub­ter­ranean gardens.

AM:  With flow­ers and trees? Could plant life really grow underground?

ST:  The infra­struc­ture is already in place. Exper­i­ments with sub­ter­ranean farms have yielded pos­i­tive results, most notably the Par­sona O2 project which is a farm­ing com­plex located in Tokyo. The aim of these new gar­dens is not nec­es­sar­ily to pro­duce com­mer­cial cash crops. Instead, the gar­dens will act as zones of relief from the city, much like pocket parks. Each gar­den can be dif­fer­ent, some more under­ground than oth­ers, but all attempt to re-activate these resid­ual spaces. It’s some­thing I’ve never tack­led before. I find it very exciting.