Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
The wraps finally came off the renovation of Museum subway station at a grand opening today. Amidst the coming and going of subway trains and riders, a large group of press and luminaries, penned in by watchful officials, gathered. Mayor David Miller praised the project as "a shining example of what our public spaces can be." While there has certainly been criticism of the project and its funding, it's hard to not find the finished columns quite irresistible and fun.
The five different columns represent First Nations, Ancient Egypt, Mexico's Toltec Culture, Chinese, and Ancient Greek styles. See the columns and more images from the opening after the jump.
All photos by Miles Storey.
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I hate to ask this but: when does the first sign of vandalism appear?
David E wrote: "I hate to ask this but: when does the first sign of vandalism appear?"
And will Vandalist be there to cover it?
These are way better photos than the official ones.
Miles, say hello next time.
Oh cool, these look really nice.. Can't wait to check it out in person.
I like the way they seem to have done up the ceiling to look like a gallery ceiling too. Hopefully they keep it clean.
Heh, so weird-looking. Have to remember to adjust my commute one day to check it out.
Thanks Joe, I expect that will be the only time I'm allowed to use a tripod in a subway station so I wanted to make the most of it!
I did think you would be there but realized I didn't know what you looked like, and vice versa. One thing I did like about the ceremony was watching people getting off the trains, realizing there was a to-do going on, and checking out the columns. I love it when people with phone cams mix it up with the press with thousands of dollars of camera gear hanging off them.
Go look at the original design drawing that is at
http://www.tcf.ca/Portals/0/docs/MCov_2007_08_04_OnceFutureMuseumStation_GlobeMail.pdf
down at the bottom. You will notice a much more elegant ceiling (no bare white paint with exposed electrical conduit). Also, I doubt the bare patches of brown painted wall were exactly part of the original design.
Either it ain't finished yet, or they ran out of money.
The Greek columns don't really fit in at all with all the other carved ones, but otherwise, it looks pretty decent.
Notice that the most impressive traits of this reno is that the station is very clean and that it's well lit.
.... Hey!
Looks great and is a lot of fun to look at. Reminds me a bit of the Athens subway.
I am sure vandalist will be the first to "deconstruct" this by taking a picture of a wheat paste and quoting Derrida to justify its place in a public space.
There is still a lot of work to do. When will the fares concourse be renovated? (It's in pretty bad shape). Is a real second exit (not just an emergency exit) going to be built to serve the law school and Victoria/St. Michael's Colleges better? What about the elevator?
At least there's no advertising.
Yeah, I like the terrazzo floors, and that it is as clean as a Tokyo subway station ....
Tuds
looks awesome! it's even better than the tiled mosaics at St Clair W and Dupont stations and those are pretty damned cool too!
That old lady in the first photograph is priceless. Her expression is exactly how I imagine those of most transit fanboys in reaction to the redesign.
I'm assuming that the ads go back up soon. I haven't been through Museum for a week or so, but there certainly were ads up for a while. The station really looks hideous with the ads up,since they aren't colour keyed to anything, and then use the same ugly frames as everywhere else.
I hope they arranged to keep the forms (or molds, or whatever) for the columns so that they can be replaced without starting from scratch. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I wouldn't give them much more than 5 years before they need serious repair. Museum isn't usually very busy, but those columns will attract plenty of negative attention.
@#7: Yeah, I kinda have to second that. I go through Museum a couple times each week, and every time I'd glance up at the conduits and old fluorescents and get more and more worried that the neat ceilings wouldn't become a reality. Since the construction mess has disappeared, I can only assume they mean to leave it as-is, which is disappointing. Half of good architecture is in the execution.
Another thing: compare the ceilings over the tracks in the renderings and photos. The reality seems a lot gloomier, which sort of sabotages the nice effect of the columns. A fresh coat of paint and some indirect lighting (LEDs, maybe?) would make a huge difference. The budget may be tight, but why do a half-job if the renovations will stand for years?
I think a little attention to details will go a long way encouraging public acceptance of the renovations.
I wonder if it is completely finished. They might have cleared everything out of the way for the ceremony but I think we still would have seen some evidence of it, behind a temp wall at the end for example, but I didn't.
By making the bases the same colour/texture as the floor a lot of people are going to be scuffing up against them. When you're close to the columns and look down it's almost invisible. I'm not sure why it was done that way, seems like some contrast would have been smart.
It doesn't suck! Am I ever surprised!
I love the reno, even if the columns are a bit mismatched. The Egyptian sarcophagi make me wish for a Han Solo-frozen-in-carbonite pillar. That, coupled with my suggestion to get Majel Barrett to do the automated announcements, would make Toronto's transit system a geek tourist Mecca. Ooh, a Death Star subway station...worth the Lucasfilm licensing fees? ;-)
from these fotos it looks cheesy.
kinda like canada's wonderland.
at least it's clean.
for now....
I wish all the stations looked this clean.
I think this looks nice, albeit a tad gaudy, but my biggest complaint is that the carpet doesn't match the drapes—the unchanged platform floor looks totally mismatched to everything above it.
I noticed the bare (albeit painted) concrete sections a while ago and thought that something was supposed to be inserted. I hope it's not for super-sized ads. Note that the fluorescent lights aren't original, they were replaced several years ago. The originals are the rounded style seen in most other stations. From what I could piece together in various stories, I haven't seen anything about renovating the mezzanine area for now. The Greek pillar will look suitably ancient once some of that T-1 brake dust sticks to it.
From the photos, the Iconic pillars look really out of place, but I imagine Caryatids would have turned out a bit too Rubenesque.
Ionic? They look Doric actually ... I like the idea of Caryatids! Might have fit in better.
I'm surprised it came out so restrained; I was expecting lots of paint, faux gold leaf, etc. The idea itself is irredeemably kitschy, but the execution is as tasteful as it will get, I think.
I didn't think that I would like these but after seeing them yesterday on the commute home I really do!
I knew I should have double checked Doric/Ionic before hitting Post.
Got a glimpse of these by poking my nose into somewhere it didn't belong when they were building it, and so did some photographer so I am surprised they didn't end up online.
I am quite pleased with the result and I actually just felt my first pang of nostalgia for U of T - ever.
Well done, Miles. I'm undecided about the station.
When they do Union Platform 2 they should make the platform pillars Leafs. Reliefs of Gilmour, Clark, Salming, Red Kelly etc. That way, visiting teams can have more realistic practices with ball hockey on the platform since the current Leaf defence corps is about as incapable of moving to intercept as a load bearing pillar.
Once they are done doing that, they can redecorate College with pictures of President's Choice products to replace the old Leaf stuff.
Station looks REALLY tacky, especially the Doric columns.
This isn't a patch on the Paris Louvre station. Embarrassing.
I'm curious to know how it holds up to the grimy subway dust. Could it be possible that it ends up looking better once it gets weathered with the notorious underground patina?
I'm all for anything that brings tourists into the underground. I suspect that Museum Station will soon be mentioned as a minor attraction on travel sites/books, and years from now, we'll be pointing to it and bragging, just as I think we will with the ROM above it.
It may be gaudy, but gaudy has a place—and plus, it's a subway station, not the Philharmonic.
I think they should do the same to all stations, have the design of the station resemble the area the station is located in.
Yes, good idea, can't wait to see what they do with Lansdowne station, heh heh ... wall to wall murals of riff-raff, hookers and drug-dealers??
Ok, seriously. What they have done to Museum Station is pretty appalling. The worst aspect of it is the absolutely disgusting colour they picked for the walls. Some kind of indescribable pinkish beige.
As for the columns, they are going to look just dandy once they start accumulating grime and graffiti, especially those snow white Greek columns. I suppose taxpayers will be on the hook for a few extra thousand a year, just to keep the station clean.
This project will please children and tourists. Other than that, it’s a half baked embarrassment which the citizens of this city did not need and cannot afford. Congrats Miller and Giambrone, keep up the good work. How are the TTC strike talks going?
By the way, the roof of Eglinton West subway station has been leaking like a sieve for the last 3 or 4 years. Every day when it’s raining, I have to step around buckets, barricades and puddles of water, in the station and on the platforms. I get rusty water dripped on my head as I board the bus, and in the winter you have to avoid lumps of ice on the subway platform. This roof could have been fixed for a fraction of the $5 million Museum renovation.
Nothing like getting your priorities straight.
I don't think it is fair to assume that everyone involved is an idiot.
I finally checked out the station in person today, and was really underwhelmed. The columns look great, to be sure, but the whole thing really looks unfinished in a way that Miles's way-too-pretty photos don't even begin to convey. The floor does look awfully bad, but so does the ceiling. And it's not just the carpet and the drapes; nothing matches anything else. It's all just shoved-together elements, many of which look good by themselves—each of the individual styles of columns, the big station name, the brown walls—but that don't work together at all.
The TTC, I think, ought to abandon the patchwork method of station redesign. What I saw today was not worth $5 million.