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Nosy Neighbor: Is the Franklin Street station canopy being removed?
James writes: “If you look at the Franklin Street station from down the block, you can see that it looks like they have removed the green metal canopy over the stairs and put plastic sheeting in its place. Is this another drive-by removal of a prominent Tribeca neighborhood feature?”
And in a rare moment of relief around here, it turns out it was removed for safe keeping while the MTA works on the station. From the MTA spokeswoman: “We removed it for protection during the flood mitigation work. It will be reinstalled after the work is complete.”
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Why did the city ever remove these beautiful canopies from most of the subway stations? So much character and beauty.
One reason I have heard is that they supposedly blocked drivers views around corners when making turns. Most of the older ones were not high like this “homage,” but lower similar to the ones on Broadway & Wall Street.
The beautiful Franklin Street Station canopy, believe it or not, is not very old. It was commissioned in the late 1980s, and the creator – in the postmodern vernacular – designed an homage to the earlier subway kiosks.
Fascinating! Thank you for that. Didn’t know that.
I was referring to the originals, and didn’t even realize this was not an “original”. It’s beautiful regardless, and adds so much character.
Correct. See this photo (also predating Con Ed’s transformer substation):
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-a09d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
“at West Broadway and Franklin Street, to Southeast, Manhattan”
By Percy Loomis Sperr
Date Created: 05/19/39
The plywood fence is down!
Yes! I meant to post: the contractor told me last Friday that the station will be open this week. Maybe it already is?