81st Street–Museum of Natural History (IND Eighth Avenue Line)

Infobox NYCS
name = 81st Street–Museum of Natural History


bg_color = #11117D
bg_color_2 = #FF6E1A
line = IND Eighth Avenue Line
service = Eighth center local
platforms = 2 side platforms (1 on each of 2 levels)
tracks = 4 (2 on each of 2 levels)
passengers=3.516 million
pass_year=2006
pass_percent=8
borough = Manhattan
open_date=September 10, 1932New York Times, List of the 28 Stations on the New 8th Av. Line, September 10, 1932, page 6]
north_station = 86th Street
north_line = IND Eighth Avenue Line
north_service = Eighth center local
south_station = 72nd Street
south_line = IND Eighth Avenue Line
south_service = Eighth center local

81st Street–Museum of Natural History is a local station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. The station has four tracks and two side platforms. However, in this area, the local tracks are stacked, northbound above southbound, and the express tracks are stacked in the same order to the east of them, so both platforms are on the west side, one above the other. The station is at Central Park West and 81st Street rather than the major crosstown 79th Street (although an entrance also exists as this street ) to accommodate the American Museum of Natural History, which largely fills what was once Manhattan Square. The 79th Street Transverse Road through Central Park exits the park here. An underground entrance directly to the Museum is at the south end of each platform.

When the station was renovated in the 1990s in coordination with building the new planetarium, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, a program of tile mosaics was undertaken, covering the stairs and platforms, extending to floor inlays. Stairwells evoke descents into the geological strata of the Earth (at 81st Street) or into the Ocean (79th Street) and many creatures are evoked in mosaic vignettes that punctuate the stretches of white tiled wall. Fossil casts seem to emerge from the tiles as though the subway platform itself were an excavation, which indeed it is.

Under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program, a mixed-media installation was created. Entitled "For Want of a Nail", named after the old proverb, it addresses the interconnections of entities that are as vast as a galaxy and as small as a single cell. Using ceramic tile, glass tile, glass mosaic, bronze relief, and granite as primary materials, the design team depicted the evolution of extinct, existing and endangered life forms—from single celled organisms to the towering "T. rex" dinosaur. It shows images and symbols ranging from the earth's core, to the sea, the sky and the cosmos beyond. No artist has been identified in this group project.

Bus connections

*M79

References

External links

*NYCS ref|http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/stations/?7:397 nycsubway.org|IND 8th Avenue|81st Street-Museum of Natural History
*Station Reporter — [http://www.stationreporter.net/btrain.htm B Train]
*Station Reporter — [http://www.stationreporter.net/ctrain.htm C Train]
* [http://www.amnh.org/museum/subway/release.html AMNH press release on completion]
* [http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/city_of_stars/06_81st_street.html AMNH's "Natural history" illustrates some of the mosaics, mistaking the earth core for a core of the sun]