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Squirrel Grey Cat's Subway Maps
See also: Squirrel Grey Cat's List of Maps
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Miaow! Hi, I'm a subway station cat. I love miaowndering around underground railways. Especially I love those amazing pieces of graphic art that you find around subway stations. Subway maps, tube maps, metro maps -- they go by different names. Why do I like 'em? Well, at one level, I am entranced by their luminescent blocks of colour. They're in the same realm as Mondrian's celebrated paintings, in my feline opinion. At another level, they also define the public conception of the city. When Henry C. Beck designed the London tube map in 1931, he didn't just draw what was there. He radically reorganised the spatial arrangement of the lines to create a new idea of London. For example, he brought outlying stations such as High Barnet and Uxbridge into the same conceptual space as Westminster and Oxford Street. Finally, the map functions as an integral part of everyday life. Certainly in London, the tube map is used hundreds of thousands of times a day. It's a pretty important work of art. |
 Squirrel Grey Cat! |
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Favorite Links BMT Lines NYC Subway Metro Planet |
So, I have started collecting subway maps from around the world. Really, I only started in earnest in February 2000 when I discovered eBay. Before then I had only the London maps that I came across in tube stations. Then my friend Malcolm came across an intriguing 1957 tube map in Spitalfields market. [To view in separate window, click here.]. It was a bit ropey, held together with Sellotape, but it excited me to the whole history of subway maps. Malcolm gave it to me as a present, which was very kind.
After that, I looked in markets but found nothing; and I inquired in antiquarian shops, but they normally handle only items that are more than a hundred years old. I couldn't find any dealers who handle tube maps. But in February 2000, I discovered eBay! I've been really impressed by the great stuff that's out there, and how nice everybody is! Curiously, almost all the maps I've found were in eBay.com, not eBay.co.uk ..
Since then, I've discovered some fairs run by the Ephemera Society, and the Paddington Ticket Auctions, where I have met some very good dealers in subway maps. A very useful find was Anne Letch's booklet. I've typed up the section of her booklet that deals with underground maps, and integrated it with my own notes, in this index.
Although London Underground are the custodian's of Harry Beck's design, and the ultimate source of all London tube maps, other companies have also re-presented the map in guide books, diaries, and leaflets. One of the jewels I bought through eBay was an EasyGuide booklet. [To view in separate window, click here]. There is no date on it, but I would guess it is around 1939. Comparing it with the later 1957 map, notice that the Central Line was just a short, straight East-West line in the middle of the whole map -- before it was extended to the North-East and North-West, challenging the symmetric elegance of the map.
I have also started collecting subway maps from other cities: mostly New York so far, but also Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, and others.
New York
New York, New York is a great town for a cat. It's so hard to get around in almost all American cities, as the roads are so wide that it's the devil's own job to get across them without being squashed flat by automobiles. In NY, a cat can slip under the ticket barriers and commute anywhere in the city on the subway. The only snag is that I am too little to open the doors of the carriages. I have to wait for humans to get on or off. The London Tube trains are better in that respect. Most of them are automatic or semi-automatic.
It took me a while to figure out the history of the NY Subway Map. From what I gather, the first subway -- the IRT or Interborough Rapid Transit -- opened up in 1904. After that there was the BMT or Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, and the IND or 8th Avenue Independent Subway. These all got unified in 1940 under the NY Transportation Board.
Until 1958, the maps were all essentially geographic. Then Salomon was commissioned to create a digrammatic map. This lasted until 1972, then some sort of psychedelic map came into use. In 1980, John Tauranac created a new design. This is basically what the New Yorkers have now -- a slightly schematised geographic map. Not as stylised as Beck's London map, but not as realistic as the the pre-1958 NY maps.
Berkeleiana
If a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any sound?
Besides the cartography of underground railways, my other area of interest on eBay are items that relate to that luminous beacon of profound wisdom, the Good Bishop Berkeley. Why? Well, if you feel it necessary to ask that question, you are obviously not a stuffed animal. If you were a stufed cat like me, or a teddy bear, or some other plushy, you would be very much aware of the significance of Berkeleian metaphysics for us.
The continual problem that we stuffed animals have is that people do not take us seriously. The reigning assumption is that only biological creatures can have thoughts and feelings -- in short, consciousness. But we stuffed animals know from first-hand experience that we are indeed conscious. And it is George Berkeley's philosophy of subjective idealism that gives this experience a theoretical foundation. Oh, yes!
According to Berkeley, the world we find ourselves in is ultimately mental. What we take to be the material world is an illusion. Out sensory experiences that appear to be of an external world are, in fact, conjured up by God and placed directly in our minds.
Now, as far as I know (and I have not yet read all twelve volumes of his works), Berkeley himself never discussed the conscious minds of stuffed animals. (In his time, of course, there were no teddy bears.) But the theory that he advocated clearly lays down the groundwork for a theory of consciousness for stuffed animals.
In Berkeley's philosophy, each being is only a spirit, or conscious mind. That consciousness therefore does not depend on biological nervous tissue. Contrary to what most people believe, a having a brain is not a precondition for having a mind. On this view, it is irrelevant that I, and my fellow stuffed animals, have not a single brain cell among us. The fact is, taht we know by direct acquaintance that we are conscious.
In and amongst scouring eBay for maps of underground railways, I am also on the look-out for Berkeleiana. And I have found some excellent items:
- A copy of Berkeley's latter masterwork, Siris, printed in 1744! As Berkeley died in 1753, this book was actually printed and sold in London, while Berkeley was alive. Admittedly, he was living in Cloyne at that time of his life, so it is unlikely that the Good Bishop ever handled this particular volume. But even so ...
- A copy of the Principles that was owned, signed, and annotated, by one of the nuclear scientists who worked on the invention of the atom bomb, Project Manhattan. I don't know what significance -- if any -- there is in that fact, but there it is.
- Letters of Berkeley.
- An original lithograph of a group portrait of the Berkeley's, by Smybert. OK, so this isn't philosophy. But it looks good in my library. (Yes, even cats have libraries.)
Finally, if you want to visit some of my friends, click here! (But it's nothing to do with subway maps!)
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