Photo: QueensPost
Oct. 22, 2014 By Christian Murray
The artwork/excise equipment beneath the 40th Street station was removed today to make room for the 40th Street/ Lowery Plaza that will be unveiled this Friday.
Workers began disassembling the stainless steel workout equipment and rubber mats at about 11 a.m., which the workers said was on route to be displayed in North Carolina.
The equipment/artwork, which went up last October, aimed to “bring art and function [to the subway area],” said Darren Goins, the artist, at the time.
Today, as Goins was disassembling his work, he said that his Sunnyside exhibition was well received. He said that it had been replicated in other parts of the city and that it had been written about in an art magazine.
However, many residents were perplexed by the artwork and wanted it removed shortly after it went up.
The 40th Street Lowery Plaza is scheduled to open Friday with a ribbon cutting taking place there at 1 p.m. It would have opened in summer—but the artist had a contract with the Department of Transportation to have his work displayed there until October.
Sunnyside Shines Business Improvement District (BID) will be power washing the concrete beneath the 40th Street Station and setting up planters as well as tables & chairs. The plaza will be very similar to the Bliss Plaza that opened at 46th Street on July 29.
The two plazas stem from an application the BID filed with the DOT last summer for the two sites to be included as part of the NYC Plaza Program.
The DOT approved the BID’s proposal and agreed to help design the plazas and provide the funding.
Bliss Plaza (Photo: QueensPost)
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23 Comments
What is wrong with you people? So negative it’s sick! If you don’t want to enjoy it, then you don’t go there. That’s all. I’m glad they did something. It was very dirty under there and now this will make our neighborhood look better.
Seriously who wants to go hang out underneath the subway line and between 6 lanes of traffic? Instead of the BID whining to the DOT to fund beautification, why not have an after school program for kids to do it as community service? Maybe if kids had something productive to do, they wouldn’t be out robbing houses all week long.
The only people enjoying the plaza are homeless, confused elderly and kids waiting for their homies to rob sunnyside.
Who on earth wants to go hang out underneath the damn subway line and between 6 lanes of traffic? I really don’t get it.
Why don’t you ask any of the people who have been enjoying the open plaza?
People who don’t value oxygen, that’s who!
I’m just so happy that Bliss Plaza is such a success, and that they’re expanding the idea further west! It’ll be a marked improvement for everyone in the area.
They should powerwash the Whole entire EL
all you people do on this site is nag. its pathetic. i come here for news, but find myself feeling sorry for my neighbors. move if you have so much to complain about.
We’re actually not complaining that they’re taking it down. When they put it up maybe we were. But, I’ve been in Sunnyside for 7 years. I’m not going anywhere. Strong opinions need to be heard. Stop telling people to move, it’s getting really old all the time.
What a colossal failure.
Where will the fruit vendor go?
Good riddance to this “art.” In the end, it was ugly and just took up space we could use for anything else. Literally anything else.
Good. Now they can toss it back into the scrap yard where it probably came from.
We’ll take any public space we can get. Our 2.5ish parks barely suffice.
This is a ridiculous use of funding, both the artwork and the plaza. The 7 train continues to worsen, despite all of the “work” being done on it. It was in trouble again this morning and packed. Some mornings it has become life threatening to stand on the 7 train platform at 40th Street. It’s 4-5 people deep and nobody can get on the trains when they do arrive. It’s dangerous. When are the MTA, city government and Jimmy Van Bramer going to focus on this instead of sprinkling car exhaust contaminated fairy dust around the “plaza” to distract us???
The MTA has jurisdiction of the 7 train, not the plaza below. They are two completely different issues.
It works together. Everyone in their right mind knows how crowded these stations get and in their infinite idiotic wisdom they decide to put a plaza. A place where MORE people can crowd around in and around the station.
Regardless of where the money comes from, focusing on beautifying the plaza and encouraging Sunnysiders to sit there and suck in car exhaust is ridiculous when the train above it is a complete disaster zone!
What really annoys me in the morning is, at the height of rush hour at 8am, there are at least three Flushing bound trains for every Manhattan bound train. Haven’t the idiots at the MTA figured out yet that most people go in to Manhattan in the morning and not out?
you know what ? get a different JOB or ask your boss if you can come in at 11 and work till 7……..and get a seat…..
sorry i hate commuting and jammed subways….they should have built another subway tunnel under the east river 30 years ago…
That is because all trains that have already gone into Manhattan on two tracks come back out on a single track. When the two tracks merge at Queensboro it creates a bottleneck. They do not stack Flushing bound trains in a nonexistent layup yard just to mess with you, though I know it can feel that way. If you live South of Greenpoint Ave. and west of Calvary try taking the Q39 that runs along 48th Ave, or the Q67 that runs along Laurel Hill Blvd. Both will bring you to 23 Ely Ave station, Court Square, Queens Plaza, and Queensboro. In addition the Q67 stops at Hunters Point. The run on either bus is usually 10 to 15 minutes at most. It saves me 20 minutes over 7.
agreed. the mta receives at least 25 million dollars a DAY in revenue from the locals, yet it’s one of the worst subway systems in the world with poor maintenance and hardly any technological advancements even though billions of dollars are poured into its pockets. then again, corruption runs all the way up to the contractors that it hires. its only been what, a hundred years? the stations haven’t changed a bit!