A Student Writes a Rejection Letter Rejecting Harvard’s Rejection Letter (1981): Hear It Read by Actor Himesh Patel

in Education, Harvard, Letters | March 16th, 2023

The doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and sports edi­tor Paul Devlin has won five Emmy awards, but he may well be bet­ter known for not get­ting into Har­vard — or rather, for not get­ting into Har­vard, then reject­ing Har­vard’s rejec­tion. “I noticed that the rejec­tion let­ter I received from Har­vard had a gram­mat­i­cal error,” Devlin writes. “So, I wrote a let­ter back, reject­ing their rejec­tion let­ter.” His moth­er then “sent a copy of this let­ter to the New York Times and it was pub­lished in the New Jer­sey sec­tion on May 31, 1981.” In 1996, when the New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a cov­er sto­ry “about the trau­ma stu­dents were expe­ri­enc­ing get­ting reject­ed from col­leges,” she seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send her son’s rejec­tion-rejec­tion let­ter to the Paper of Record.

It turned out that Devlin’s let­ter had already run there, hav­ing long since gone the pre-social-media equiv­a­lent of viral. “The New York Times accused me of pla­gia­rism. When they dis­cov­ered that I was the orig­i­nal author and they had unwit­ting­ly re-print­ed them­selves, they were none too hap­py. But my mom insists that it was impor­tant to reprint the arti­cle because the issue was clear­ly still rel­e­vant.”

Indeed, its after­life con­tin­ues even today, as evi­denced by the new video from Let­ters Live at the top of the post. In it actor Himesh Patel, well-known from series like Eas­t­En­ders, Sta­tion Eleven, and Avenue 5, reads aloud Devlin’s let­ter, which runs as fol­lows:

Hav­ing reviewed the many rejec­tion let­ters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejec­tion at this time.

This year, after apply­ing to a great many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, I received an espe­cial­ly fine crop of rejec­tion let­ters. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the num­ber of rejec­tions that I can accept is lim­it­ed.

Each of my rejec­tions was reviewed care­ful­ly and on an indi­vid­ual basis. Many fac­tors were tak­en into account – the size of the insti­tu­tion, stu­dent-fac­ul­ty ratio, loca­tion, rep­u­ta­tion, costs and social atmos­phere.

I am cer­tain that most col­leges I applied to are more than qual­i­fied to reject me. I am also sure that some mis­takes were made in turn­ing away some of these rejec­tions. I can only hope they were few in num­ber.

I am aware of the keen dis­ap­point­ment my deci­sion may bring. Through­out my delib­er­a­tions, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have tak­en for you to reach your deci­sion to reject me.

Keep in mind that at times it was nec­es­sary for me to reject even those let­ters of rejec­tion that would nor­mal­ly have met my tra­di­tion­al­ly high stan­dards.

I appre­ci­ate your hav­ing enough inter­est in me to reject my appli­ca­tion. Let me take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wish you well in what I am sure will be a suc­cess­ful aca­d­e­m­ic year.

SEE YOU IN THE FALL!

Sin­cere­ly,
Paul Devlin
Appli­cant at Large

How­ev­er con­sid­er­able the mox­ie (to use a whol­ly Amer­i­can term) shown by the young Devlin in his let­ter, his rea­son­ing seems not to have swayed Har­vard’s admis­sions depart­ment. Whether it would prove any more effec­tive in the twen­ty-twen­ties than it did in the nine­teen-eight­ies seems doubt­ful, but it must remain a sat­is­fy­ing read for high-school stu­dents dispir­it­ed by the sup­pli­cat­ing pos­ture the col­lege-appli­ca­tion process all but forces them to take. It sure­ly does them good to remem­ber that they, too, pos­sess the agency to declare accep­tance or rejec­tion of that which is pre­sent­ed to them sim­ply as neces­si­ty, as oblig­a­tion, as a giv­en. And for Devlin, at least, there was always the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

T. S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Meet the “Gram­mar Vig­i­lante,” Hell-Bent on Fix­ing Gram­mat­i­cal Mis­takes on England’s Store­front Signs

Steven Pinker Iden­ti­fies 10 Break­able Gram­mat­i­cal Rules: “Who” Vs. “Whom,” Dan­gling Mod­i­fiers & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Artificial Intelligence, Art & the Future of Creativity: Watch the Final Chapter of the “Everything is a Remix” Series

in Art, Technology | March 16th, 2023

From 2010 to 2012, film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son released “Every­thing is a Remix,” a four-part series (watch here) that explored art and cre­ativ­i­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. In the ini­tial series, Fer­gu­son focused on musi­cians, film­mak­ers, writ­ers and even video game mak­ers. Now, a lit­tle more than a decade lat­er, Fer­gu­son has resur­faced and released a fifth and final chap­ter in his series, with this episode focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent kind of artist: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Respond­ing to the rise of AI-gen­er­at­ed art, Fer­gu­son delves into the ethics of art gen­er­at­ed by machines, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they’re trained with human-cre­at­ed art. Is AI-gen­er­at­ed art a form of pira­cy? Or is it anoth­er kind of cre­ative remix? And what does AI mean for the future of art and cre­ativ­i­ty? These are just some of the weighty ques­tions Fer­gu­son tack­les in his final install­ment. Watch it above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Every­thing is a Remix: A Video Series Explor­ing the Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty

DALL‑E, the New AI Art Gen­er­a­tor, Is Now Open for Every­one to Use

An AI-Gen­er­at­ed Paint­ing Won First Prize at a State Fair & Sparked a Debate About the Essence of Art

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

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How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Story of Filippo Brunelleschi and the Duomo in Florence

in Architecture, History | March 15th, 2023

Even if Flo­rence did­n’t rep­re­sent the absolute pin­na­cle of human civ­i­liza­tion at the end of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, it had to have been a strong con­tender for the posi­tion. What the city lacked, how­ev­er, was a cathe­dral befit­ting its sta­tus. Hence the con­struc­tion, which com­menced in 1296, of just such a holy struc­ture, in accor­dance with ambi­tious plans drawn up by archi­tect Arnol­fo di Cam­bio. But when di Cam­bio died in 1302, work came more or less to a stop for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry. Con­struc­tion resumed in 1344 under Giot­to, whose own death three years lat­er left the project to his assis­tant Andrea Pisano, who was him­self suc­ceed­ed by Francesco Tal­en­ti, Gio­van­ni di Lapo Ghi­ni, Alber­to Arnol­di, Gio­van­ni d’Am­bro­gio, Neri di Fio­ra­van­ti, and Andrea Orcagna.

None of these archi­tects, how­ev­er astute, man­aged to fin­ish the cathe­dral: in 1418, it still had a gap­ing hole on top where its dome should have been, and in any case no viable design or engi­neer­ing pro­ce­dure to con­struct one. “So they had a com­pe­ti­tion, and every­body was invit­ed to sub­mit their projects,” says Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo, who tells the sto­ry in the video at the top of the post.

Enter the sculp­tor Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, who declared, in effect, “I can do it. I can build you the dome. And what’s more, I can build you the dome with­out coins or earth.” That last was a ref­er­ence to an ear­li­er archi­tec­t’s sug­ges­tion that the dome under con­struc­tion be sup­port­ed with a mound of dirt filled with mon­ey, so peas­ants would glad­ly vol­un­teer to cart it away after com­ple­tion.

Brunelleschi’s con­sid­er­ably more ele­gant idea was inspired by the ruins of antiq­ui­ty, not least the Pan­theon, which then boast­ed the largest dome ever built in Europe, dis­cussed by Bra­vo in a pre­vi­ous video. In this one he breaks down the inge­nious tech­niques Brunelleschi used to out­do the Pan­theon, and with­out using a tem­po­rary sup­port­ing struc­ture of any kind. Instead, he incor­po­rat­ed ring-like ele­ments “tying the dome from out­side, as if they were belts like the ones we wear,” as well as “a par­tic­u­lar kind of brick­work, a pat­tern with a series of spi­ral ribs” which “allowed them to lock togeth­er the bricks that were placed hor­i­zon­tal­ly.” The result, a struc­ture “com­plete­ly self-brac­ing in all its phas­es of con­struc­tion,” has stood firm­ly since 1469 as, quite lit­er­al­ly, a crown­ing glo­ry: not just of the Duo­mo, but of Flo­rence as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, Untrained in Archi­tec­ture or Engi­neer­ing, Built the World’s Largest Dome at the Dawn of the Renais­sance

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course: Explore the TV Series That Introduced the Wines of the World (1995)

in Food & Drink | March 15th, 2023

“The word ‘con­nois­seur’ is not an attrac­tive one,” writes Jan­cis Robin­son in her mem­oir Tast­ing Plea­sure: Con­fes­sions of a Wine Lover. “It smacks of exclu­siv­i­ty, pre­cious­ness and elit­ism.” Indeed, “con­nois­seur­ship is not a nec­es­sary state for wine appre­ci­a­tion. It is per­fect­ly pos­si­ble to enjoy wine enor­mous­ly with­out real­ly under­stand­ing it. But a con­nois­seur sees each indi­vid­ual wine in its his­tor­i­cal, geo­graph­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal con­text and is tru­ly sen­si­tive to its pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Those who drink wine too care­less­ly or too strin­gent­ly, “those who will not meet a wine halfway, and who con­sis­tent­ly ignore the sto­ry each wine has to tell, deprive them­selves of a large part of the poten­tial plea­sure asso­ci­at­ed with each bot­tle.”

How best to expe­ri­ence that plea­sure — or rather, how best to attain the state of con­nois­seur­ship that makes it acces­si­ble in the first place? One could do worse than start­ing with the works of Robin­son her­self, who’s not just one of the most respect­ed wine writ­ers alive today, but also one­time super­vi­sor of the lux­u­ry wine selec­tion on British Air­ways’ Con­corde and advi­sor for the wine cel­lar of the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

Since she began cov­er­ing wine pro­fes­sion­al­ly near­ly half a cen­tu­ry ago, she has pro­duced a great deal of work in print as well as for the screen. Among the lat­ter, per­haps the most ambi­tious is Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course, whose ten episodes orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC 2 in 1995 and are now avail­able to watch on Robin­son’s own Youtube chan­nel.

With this $1.6 mil­lion pro­duc­tion, Robin­son was “set loose on the wine world, far too much of the time in full make­up, with fresh­ly done hair and clothes sub­si­dized by an offi­cial BBC bud­get.” Ded­i­cat­ing each episode to a dif­fer­ent grape vari­etal “allowed us with­in a sin­gle pro­gram to vis­it more than one region — and there­fore vary the scenery, archi­tec­ture and cli­mate. It also reflect­ed my pas­sion­ate inter­est in grape vari­eties and my con­vic­tion that com­ing to grips with the most impor­tant grapes pro­vides the eas­i­est route to learn­ing about wine.” The year­long shoot took her and her team around the globe, vis­it­ing wine­mak­ers wher­ev­er they could be found: France, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Chile, and even north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, where they man­aged an audi­ence with auteur-vint­ner Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

“The con­flict between the New and Old Worlds of wine was com­ing nice­ly to a head at just the right time for our series, Robin­son notes.” Those worlds have set­tled into a kind of rel­a­tive peace in the decades since — as has the “Chardon­nay boom” of the mid-nine­teen-nineties, about which Robin­son lets slip some frus­tra­tion onscreen. Despite her vast knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of wine, Robin­son sel­dom shows any hes­i­tan­cy to crack a joke, and sure­ly her con­tin­ued promi­nence as a wine edu­ca­tor owes some­thing to that sense of humor, on dis­play in the Talks at Google inter­view about her 2016 book The 24-Hour Wine Expert. More recent­ly, she entered into anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with the BBC, specif­i­cal­ly the new BBC Mae­stro online edu­ca­tion plat­form, to cre­ate the course “An Under­stand­ing of Wine.” In all pur­suits, under­stand­ing is the basis of plea­sure — but in wine, even more so.

Episodes of Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course:

 

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vin­tage Wine Course (UC Davis, 1973)

High-Tech Japan­ese Cam­era Proves That the Shape of a Wine Glass Affects the Fla­vor of Wines

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

Storm: New Short Film Cap­tures the Artistry of Wine­mak­ing

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Georges Seurat’s Pointillist Painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Is a Masterpiece

in Art, History | March 14th, 2023

Every­one knows that Georges Seu­rat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jat­te, or A Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te, resides at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. Or at least every­one who’s seen Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Insti­tute appears as just one of the implau­si­bly var­ied attrac­tions of Chica­go enjoyed by that film’s tit­u­lar hooky-play­ing high-school senior and his friends — even the anx­i­ety-rid­den Cameron, drops from a moment out of his trou­bled life while trans­fixed by Seu­rat’s most famous paint­ing. The clos­er he looks, the less dis­cernible its gen­teel Parisian fig­ures become, dis­solv­ing into fields of col­ored dots.

“George Seu­rat spent most of his adult life think­ing about col­or,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne, “study­ing the­o­ries and work­ing out sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly how one col­or, placed in a series of dots next to those of anoth­er, cre­ates a whole dif­fer­ent col­or when it hits the reti­na of the human eye.”

By the time of La Grande Jat­te — which he metic­u­lous­ly planned, labo­ri­ous­ly exe­cut­ed, and com­plet­ed between 1884 and 1886 — “he made sure we saw col­or exact­ly how he want­ed us to.” Payne tells the sto­ry of Seu­rat, his sci­en­tif­ic, aes­thet­ic, and philo­soph­i­cal inter­ests, and the fruits of his intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic labors, in the new video from his chan­nel Great Art Explained at the top of the post.

Seu­rat first paint­ed La Grande Jat­te using not dots but dash­es, “ver­ti­cal for trees and hor­i­zon­tal for the water.” After fur­ther devel­op­ing his col­or the­o­ry, he returned to the can­vas and “added hun­dreds of thou­sands of small dots of com­pli­men­ta­ry col­ors on top of what he’d already done, which appear as sol­id and lumi­nous forms when seen from a dis­tance.” The final stage involved the addi­tion of a col­ored bor­der around the entire scene, and not long there­after elab­o­rate inter­pre­ta­tions of the out­ward­ly placid paint­ing began to mul­ti­ply. But “the lack of nar­ra­tive means we real­ly should look to the artist’s obses­sion with form, tech­nique, and the­o­ry, which is prac­ti­cal­ly all he wrote about, and not the mean­ing or sub­ject man­ner.” We may enjoy talk­ing about art’s con­tent, but it is art’s form, after all, that tru­ly cap­ti­vates us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

2,000+ Impres­sion­ist, Post-impres­sion­ist & Ear­ly Mod­ern Paint­ings Now Free Online, Thanks to the Barnes Foun­da­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War

The Scream Explained: What’s Real­ly Hap­pen­ing in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Paint­ing

The Maligned Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illus­trates Emile Zola’s Grit­ty Nov­el L’Assommoir (1878)

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch a Visual Symphony of Everyday Objects in the French Stop Motion Film, “Grands Canons”

in Animation | March 14th, 2023

“A brush makes water­col­ors appear on a white sheet of paper. An every­day object takes shape, drawn with pre­ci­sion by an artist’s hand. Then two, then three, then four… Super­im­posed, con­densed, mul­ti­plied, thou­sands of doc­u­men­tary draw­ings in suc­ces­sive series come to life on the screen, com­pos­ing a ver­i­ta­ble visu­al sym­pho­ny of every­day objects. The accu­mu­la­tion, both fas­ci­nat­ing and dizzy­ing, takes us on a trip through time.” That’s how the Vimeo chan­nel of Girelle Pro­duc­tions pref­aces the ani­ma­tion “Grands Canons” (aka “Big Guns”) by French film­mak­er Alain Biet. It’s a wild ride, a painstak­ing feat in exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing. Enjoy it above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Aeon/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Haunt­ing­ly Ani­mates Paris’ Famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Book­store

The Book of Leaves: A Beau­ti­ful Stop Motion Film Fea­tur­ing 12,000 Pressed Leaves

Watch “The Woodswim­mer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entire­ly with Wood, and “Bru­tal­ly Tedious” Tech­niques

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How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost

in History, Literature | March 13th, 2023

Ancient Greece and Rome had plen­ty of lit­er­a­ture, but prac­ti­cal­ly none of it sur­vives today. What exact­ly became of almost every­thing writ­ten down in West­ern antiq­ui­ty is the sub­ject of the video above by ancient-his­to­ry Youtube chan­nel Told in Stone, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its inves­ti­ga­tions into every­thing from the Colos­se­um and the Pan­theon to Roman nightlife and the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius. But none of its past videos has quite as much rel­e­vance to this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry as the one on the burn­ing of the Library of Alexan­dria.

Described by nar­ra­tor Gar­ret Ryan as “the great­est of all ancient libraries,” the Library of Alexan­dria could have con­tained between 532,800 and 700,000 vol­umes in scroll form, all of them lost by the time Julius Cae­sar burned it down in 48 B.C..

Even so, “the loss of all but a tiny frac­tion of ancient lit­er­a­ture was not brought about by the dis­ap­pear­ance of a sin­gle library. It was, instead, the con­se­quence of the basic fragili­ty of texts before the advent of print­ing.” Papyrus, the pre-paper writ­ing mate­r­i­al first devel­oped in ancient Egypt, cer­tain­ly could­n’t stand the test of time: in rel­a­tive­ly humid west­ern Europe, “most papyri had to be recopied every cen­tu­ry or so.”

Plus ça change: even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, in our dig­i­tal era, long-term data archival has turned out to neces­si­tate reg­u­lar move­ment from one stor­age medi­um to the next. But per­haps our civ­i­liza­tion will prove luck­i­er with the process than the Roman Empire, whose col­lapse meant that “the elites who had tra­di­tion­al­ly com­mis­sioned new copies all but van­ished. Far few­er man­u­scripts were pro­duced, and those that were tend­ed to serve the par­tic­u­lar pur­pos­es of reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, and the tech­ni­cal dis­ci­plines.” For these and oth­er rea­sons, very few clas­sics made it to the Mid­dle Ages, and thus to the Renais­sance. But even if you don’t have much to study, so the lat­ter era glo­ri­ous­ly demon­strat­ed, you can more than com­pen­sate by study­ing it hard.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Was Actu­al­ly Lost When the Library of Alexan­dria Burned?

How Egypt­ian Papyrus Is Made: Watch Arti­sans Keep a 5,000-Year-Old Art Alive

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Par­ti­cle Accel­er­a­tors, 3D Mod­el­ing & Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | March 13th, 2023

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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