A Struggling Metro System’s Big, Vague, Self-Destructive Idea

In 1979, construction began on one of the biggest public transportation projects in the history of Buffalo, New York—an ambitious rapid-transit system called Metro Rail that boosters hoped would help arrest the population freefall the city was then enduring.

Accordingly, the city’s leaders and the Niagara Frontier Transit Authority (NFTA) were determined to make this new system a showstopper. The transit authority asked architects to draw up designs for a network of modern underground stations. To complement each one, a public art selection committee was formed and handed $1.15 million in public funds. Predating the MTA Arts and Design program in New York City by six years, the committee received over 500 responses from artists around the world; 75 were asked to submit proposals and 25 were ultimately chosen to have their work displayed. For a Main Street corridor hemorrhaging businesses and people to the suburbs, the presence of these stations, and the artwork within them, announced a once-in-a-lifetime investment in Buffalo.