What New York Subway Stations Actually Look Like

On the official map of the New York subway, each station is a tiny dot. But that representation obscures the labyrinth-like complexity of these structures, which can span two or more blocks and multiple levels. They contain walkways, escalators, tunnels, ramps, forming mazes that befuddle even the staunchest New Yorkers, let alone the troves of tourists exploring the city. Even when commuters navigate these stations successfully, they are likely coming out the other side in the wrong direction.

For these reasons and others, architect Candy Chan has felt “constantly lost” in New York. In Hong Kong, where she’s originally from, each exit is labeled with a letter and a number. And in the absence of such detailed signage in New York, she started thinking about what what stations actually looked like. In 2015, she started Project NYC Subway—an incredibly wonky, visual study of New York City’s most complex subway stations. Now, she’s added a new series of sketches of stations and their surroundings along Broadway. “At the beginning, my focus was on the station themselves, because I find it very disorienting to be in one of the bigger ones,”she says. “Once I had about 20-something stations done, I started to look at how they relate to the city.” Her new images contain tiny people and tall buildings for scale, as well as trees, sculptures, parks and squares—all of which “actually matter in the urban setting,”she says.