34th ST HERALD SQUARE STATION EXPLAINED – HOW TO GET TO KOREAN TOWN

Midtown is one of the busiest areas in Manhattan, especially during rush hours, with all the people, cars, and bicycles going full speed in every direction, it could be annoying and sometimes dangerous to walk around there. 

The 34th Street Herald Square station is big – it spans three blocks north-south, from 32nd to 35th street, and it’s at the intersection of 6th Avenue and Broadway. Now if you want to avoid all the hustle and bustle on the streets, getting out of the exit closest to your destination is the key. It will not only make your life easier but also save you some precious time!

I personally go there a lot for Korean food (Seoul Garden is my go-to for get-togethers.. kalbi and tofu soup is the perfect combo!). And so I decided make a diagram to illustrate the most efficient way to get out of it:

How to get to Korean Town in NYC
Disclaimer: Drawing is not to scale and only shows the approximate and relative location of things

WHERE YOU ARE GOING

Korean town (a.k.a. the “Korea Way”) is the block on 32nd street between 5th and Broadway. The closest subway exit is on the NE corner of 32nd and Broadway. To get there, simply follow the red dotted line in the diagram, or follow these instructions:

Korea Way (image source)

IF YOU CAME FROM THE B / D / F / M LINE

1.  First, no matter where you are, walk to the far south end of the platform.* 
2. Go up the stairs, to the mezzanine. There, you will see a bunch of turnstiles, but do NOT go out of them. Instead, look for the N / Q / R sign and follow it, and go up the stairs:

Follow this red arrow

Go up these stairs

3. Then you will be on the upper mezzanine level. Now go through the turnstiles, and go to the exit on your far left. There is a sign that says “32nd Street and Broadway NE Corner”. That’s your exit!

This is the exit closest to Korean Town!

IF YOU CAME FROM THE N / Q / R LINE

  1. Go to the far south end of the platform and go up the stairs.*
  2. Go to step 3 of above.

* If figuring out which way south is isn’t intuitive to you, do this: if you were on an uptown train, walk opposite to the direction the train is going, and vice versa :P

And that's it! Once you find that exit and get out of it, it's all the glorious Korean food waiting for you. Yum!

COLUMBUS CIRCLE STATION EXPLAINED- THE PARK, THE MALL, AND THE "TURNSTYLE"

New York City is a beautiful and exciting city, especially when you have time and it’s nice outside, it’s delightful just to walk around and look around. But then there are also bad days, when you are in a hurry and it’s cold and rainy… on those days, if you had to take the subway, you would either want to be underground for as long as you can, or to have the most efficient way around the station, right?

There are signages in the subway stations, but they don’t give you an overall picture of what the stations look like. In light of that, I have taken the initiative to illustrate some of the more complex stations, as well as the landmarks and popular destination points around them. Let’s look at the 59th Street Columbus Circle station: 

59th Street Columbus Circle Station layout map
Disclaimer: Drawing is not to scale and only shows the approximate and relative location of things

TRACKS

The 1 train runs on the upper level, along the diagonal Broadway, and the A / C and B / D trains run on the lower level, straight along 8th Ave / Central Park West. On both levels, the east tracks go uptown and the west tracks go downtown.  

EXITS

  • Starbucks and upper west side: northern end of the downtown track
  • The mall / Time Warner Center: southern end of the downtown track (there is an escalator)
  • Central Park: midpoint of the uptown track, opposite to the semi-circular array of turnstiles
  • Globe-shaped sculpture: midpoint of the uptown track, out of the semi-circular array of turnstiles
  • Museum of Art and Design: south end of uptown track, opposite to escalators to mall
  • 57th Streets exits: What used to be a tunnel is now under construction. When it opens there will be an underground transit-marketplace under 8th avenue, between 57th and 58th Street, and will look like this:

Read more at  http://www.turn-style.com/

TRANSFERS

To transfer between uptown and downtown trains, the shortest path is the walkway between the tracks on the lower level. I marked it with a red dotted line in the graphic. It has a wavy guardrail and it looks like this:


So this is the first of a series of blog posts I plan to do for the five stations I have picked. More to come! 


HELVETICA

While working on my graphics for this project, I have to pick everything that goes into it- line type, line weight, paper size, paper texture, transparency etc.

The choice of font is a no-brainer, since I will just use what the subway system uses in all of their signages- HELVETICA. In fact, there is a whole documentary about this typeface:

A glimpse at the wonderful documentary (2007) by Gary Hustwit: http://www.helveticafilm.com/about.html Own the film for $10: http://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/helvetica/id284740710

There is also a book about it:

23RD STREET STATION - A "SPLIT"

After tackling complex stations like Times Square and Herald Square, the 23rd Street station becomes relatively easy to survey and draw because it only has one line and therefore one level underground. Instead of going back and forth, I sketched out the whole station after one visit and it looks like this:

What is worth mentioning is that it is one of those stations that does NOT let you transfer between uptown and downtown trains inside the station. If you realized you need to reverse your direction of travel, you either have to leave the station, go across the street and swipe (and pay if you don't have a pass) again, or, you have to take the train to a station that does let you transfer and go back. 

Of course, it does say so on the sign, that it's for "Uptown and Queens" only. But I think there should be a symbol for, and a term that describes, such stations. I would like to coin the term "SPLIT" here:

split

noun

  1. A subway station in NYC inside which you cannot transfer between uptown and downtown trains.

THE PROCESS

When I started this project, I naively thought I could just go walk around in the stations, take some pictures, and sketch the stations out casually like this:

But in reality, it was way harder than I thought. In order to work out where things are relative to each other, I had to developed a process to visualize the stations step by step. First, I document the entrances (from streets to turnstiles) on the neighborhood maps:

Then I make 2D drawings in the computer:

And then I go back and sketch some more, verifying my guesses and adding things I missed:

Then I model it in 3D:

And I render it:

And all of these steps kinda go back and forth and back and forth until I get the overall picture. The final graphic will be a combination of all of these. Almost there!

GETTING STARTED

I am an architect, so I am no stranger to surveying spaces from scratch. Still, it would be great to have something to base my drawings off of. To begin my quest, I went into the stations to look for the maps that tell you where the exits are. They look like this:

And so I thought alright, I’ll just have to go to each station to take a picture of the map. And then I thought, is there a chance these maps are online? So I went home and did a quick search and bam! Here they are:

Find all neighborhood maps like this one at http://web.mta.info/maps/neighborhood_maps.htm

Find all neighborhood maps like this one at http://web.mta.info/maps/neighborhood_maps.htm

They are called “neighborhood maps” under “maps” in mta.info. 

They are neither editable nor printable, but a quick print-screen will do. With them, I am ready to go out and take some actions!

 

SQUARE, SQUARE, SQUARE, SQUARE, CIRCLE…

There are more than 400 subway stations in New York, and ideally I would like to draw them all. 

But, like many things in life, I know if I aim too high, I will end up getting overwhelmed and giving up. As such, I have decided to start with five. Considering all the work that has to go in- taking pictures, collecting information online, surveying, modelling, drawing and photoshopping, five is already a handful, but hopefully it is manageable. 

The more complex and confusing stations are the ones with trains going in multiple directions, and to make it simple, I picked five stations along Broadway. 


Paradoxically, even though Broadway slices the rectangular Manhattan blocks into triangles and trapezoids, these intersections are all named squares and circles. (I know, I know “squares” have an ancient root, but I’m just saying.. :P) The list of stations I am going to start with is 14th Street – Union Square, 23rd Street – Madison Square, 34th Street – Herald Square, 42nd Street – Times Square, and 59th Street – Columbus Circle.
 

Pilot

It all started when my old office moved downtown to the financial district. The office is on Broadway, somewhere near the Fulton Street station. The station is HUGE -  there are so many exits that it was very confusing, and it took me and my coworkers forever to figure out how to get to the exit nearest to the office.

I am from Hong Kong, and in Hong Kong’s MTR (subway) stations, there are diagrams like these on the walls:

List of station layouts can be found here: http://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/system_map.html

List of station layouts can be found here: http://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/system_map.html

A quick search shows that Japan has similar:

And I thought to myself, why isn’t there any in NYC’s stations? Fulton Street is definitely not the only complex station, and I can't be the only person who wishes there is some form of visualization to help one find his way inside the station.

So I gave myself the challenge to make it happen, and this blog will be a record of this journey.