The New York subway system was constructed under the city back in the year 1904. As of now, it is one of the largest subway systems that you can find in the country, which covers a total distance of 6,450 miles and 472 stations.
One of the most unique things about the subway system of New York is that it is associated with unique graffiti. If you are impressed with graffiti that you can see in the New York subway system, you would be interested in learning more about the history of it as well. That’s where this article can help you.
Origins of New York graffiti
Graffiti was introduced by one of the Philadelphia High School Students named Cornbread back in the year 1967. He wanted to do that with the intention of impressing a girl. In fact, this high school student wrote down his name all over the city with the help of a spray paint. He never assumed that it would gain so much of attention, so that it will eventually transform into an art revolution.
The invention of Cornbread was quickly read to all other leading cities of the United States, including New York. This is where people started drawing art on different walls that they come across. People in New York started paying more attention to towards the subway system as they could easily find more walls for drawing graffiti. This sparked the relationship that we can see in between the New York subway system and graffiti as of now.
While enhancing the look and feel of the subway walls with graffiti, people in New York also focused on painting cars with this unique art. By the year 1983, around 25% of the cars that were driven around in the New York City were painted with graffiti resistant paint because it was such a nuisance to the car owners. However, there were some car owners who loved the idea of enhancing the good looks of their vehicles with graffiti as well.
Evolvement of New York
People in New York embraced graffiti, which created an ideal environment for the development of it along with time. Most of the people painted their names as graffiti back in the day. However, they were able to discover the powerfulness of graffiti for delivering meaningful messages to the community. This played a major role behind the way how graffiti evolved in history.
Even the trains of New York were painted in graffiti back in the day. However, people didn’t like this at all. Due to the same reason, maintenance workers were hired to clean the trains in New York, which were painted in graffiti. They were working 24x7 to remove graffiti from the trains. Their efforts were quick successful as they could clear the last graffiti covered train back in the year 1989.
When graffiti covered trains and cars were being cleared, people thought of going underground. This is where they paid special attention towards covering the walls of subway with graffiti. This is something that we can see as of now as well. Along with that, we could also see how graffiti art was gaining lots of attention as a popular form of art among people. It became a strong form of art in the New York City, where it was difficult to stop the emboldened artists from going ahead with their graffiti.
All these factors contributed towards the rich graffiti culture that we can see in the New York as of now. We can expect that it would evolve in the future as well.