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Considering how you define transit systems, I enjoyed the BC Ferries trip from Prince Rupert BC to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island through the inside passage. Beautiful trip.
I did a quick google search to find a discussion or compilation of the MBTA in film. Best I could do is an old Reddit thread. Highlights include the Departed, Goodwill Hunting, the Last of Us, etc. Basically if a movie, tv show, or video game is set in Boston it will likely have imagery of the T.
So how about you put together a list of all the movies, tv shows, and video games that the WMATA appears on, and I’ll try to match it? Granted, that sounds exhausting. I may or may not follow through, but I’d like to see what you can come up with. Episode numbers would be helpful for tv shows.
This is totally contradictory when the DC Metro is depicted in film significantly more than the T.
I'll say it again, what is iconic about the architecture of the T, more so than Philly or NYC. America has one underground icon, when it comes to the stations and their design. That's the Washington Metro.
It may have been in more movies, I don’t know, but it could also be you’re from there so you notice it more? This is actually quite common when watching movies/tv from your city. All I know is the constant shots of the Boston Garden with the subway next to it during hundreds of sporting events stuck in my mind more than a possible subway scene from a movie taking place in DC.
I re-read the OP to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and I still didn’t see anything about architecture? Like I said in my last post name things that first come to mind about a city and see where their transit falls. Only NYC, SF, and CHI will have it near the top. Personally I don’t think it’s as high up on Boston’s as those other three cities, but the OP called for 5? While old, there was a hit song about the then MTA that’s been recorded and covered by several artists. Is there one for DC’s subway? We get it that DC has a great subway on many levels, but it’s hardly iconic.
Honestly. Neither Boston nor DC have “iconic maps”.
Actually, the maps developed for the MBTA and WMATA have become important parts of both systems' graphic identities. I don't know if it makes them "iconic," but it does make them special and closely identified with their respective systems.
Both are products of an era stretching from the 1960s into the late 1980s when transit map designers decided that the most important function a subway map could perform is show you how the system is put together rather than where it gets you to on the surface. The designers took as their standard London's by-then-famous Beck Diagram, first produced in 1933.
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Having ridden both, comparing DC’s subway to Moscow’s is an insult to Moscow.
A chaçun son gout and de gustibus non disputantum est, but saying that DC's subway is architecturally distinctive is true regardless your opinion of it, and to say that it is the most architecturally distinctive subway in the country may be a subject for dispute but it is a defensible position IMO.
None of the foregoing is the same as saying that the Washington and Moscow subways are of equal architectural merit. The Washington Metro did win its designer, Harry Weese, a bunch of awards, but even so, there is nothing on Earth like the Moscow Metro. And the Muscovites carry on a tradition of outstanding station architecture and design even today, when the stations are nowhere near as palatial and far more modernist. Yet that one Moscow Metro station I posted a photo of clearly has a design inspired by Harry Weese's for Washington, just as that one other station I didn't post a photo of has Art Nouveau signage and lighting in "le style Métro" (as Art Nouveau was described for a while). I'd say this is Moscow giving a nod to other subways whose architecture is considered original, and I'd say that's a gracious gesture on Moscow's part.
Since I've now mentioned it twice, I may as well post a photo of it.
This station also has a coffered squashed barrel vault ceiling, but one that doesn't resemble anything in Washington.
Thanks for the backstory on the development of the MBTA logo. if you read it, however, I think you might want to revise your assessment of the MBTA map as not "iconic." Many maps developed in that same period have been altered significantly or even scrapped, like Massimo Vignelli's 1970s New York subway map, a rainbow-hued pile of 45- and 90-degree-angled spaghetti I referred to as one of the greatest works of abstract art ever produced when it came out (I had a station-sized one on the wall of my dorm room in college). But the basic design of the T's map remains pretty much the same, even with a new line and commuter rail service added to it. Ditto Washington's, which made its debut along with the initial segment in 1976.
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Source? Both in favor of people liking the design (I think it’s awful. Like someone crossed a beehive with a crypt), and people NOT liking other Brutalist buildings.
As for architectural opinions, see above, and Brutalist buildings in general tend to be controversial. If you live in Boston, you may recall that both Mayor Thomas Menino and his successor, Marty Walsh, ran pledging to demolish Boston City Hall. And that pledge reflects a sentiment widely shared among Bostonians. Only a minority of Bostonians, and from what I've heard since leaving, Americans in general, like the building (I'm one of them but agree that the windswept plaza in front of it needs to be replaced by something less forbidding).
Brutalism is not universally reviled, I'll grant; here's what the Wikipedia article on Brutalist architecture says about it:
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Brutalism's stark, geometric designs have historically been polarising; specific buildings, as well as the movement as a whole, have drawn a range of criticism (often being described as "cold" or "soulless") as well as support from architects and local communities (with many brutalist buildings having become cultural icons, sometimes buildings obtaining listed status) In recent decades, the movement has become a subject of renewed interest.
But at least in the United States, up until now, Brutalist buildings that have been threatened with destruction usually have been demolished; Boston City Hall probably survives for the same reason Philadelphia City Hall, a much more beloved Second Empire wedding cake (it ranked 21st on that "America's Favorite Architecture" survey, the highest ranking for a municipal government building), also survived two prior attempts to tear it down: namely, doing so would be hugely expensive.
I'm not surprised to hear that you consider the Washington Metro awful, nor do I hold that judgment against you even though I do not share it; this is merely a matter of taste. But as for it being "a Brutalist design that people actually like," I'm going to invoke that AIA 150th anniversary survey one more time. From the section of the Wikipedia article on the Washington Metro describing its architecture:
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Many Metro stations were designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese, and are examples of late-20th century modern architecture. With their heavy use of exposed concrete and repetitive design motifs, Metro stations display aspects of Brutalist design. The stations also reflect the influence of Washington's neoclassical architecture in their overarching coffered ceiling vaults. Weese worked with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based lighting designer Bill Lam on the indirect lighting used throughout the system. All of Metro's original Brutalist stations are found in Downtown Washington, D.C. and neighboring urban corridors of Arlington, Virginia, while newer stations incorporate simplified cost-efficient designs.
In 2007 the design of the Metro's vaulted-ceiling stations was voted number 106 on the "America's Favorite Architecture" list compiled by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and was the only Brutalist design to win a place among the 150 selected by this public survey.
(emphasis added)
Last edited by MarketStEl; 04-20-2020 at 05:00 PM..
Reason: corrected the two subway systems being compared in paragraph 4
if you read it, however, I think you might want to revise your assessment of the MBTA map as not "iconic."
Maybe both were designed to be iconic, but I don’t think either is in 2020.
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Only a minority of Bostonians, and from what I've heard since leaving, Americans in general, like the building.
(emphasis added)
The Christian Science Plaza is a brutalist complex that is generally liked by Bostonians, I think. I have to wonder if it was included in that survey you mentioned?
The Christian Science Plaza is a brutalist complex that is generally liked by Bostonians, I think. I have to wonder if it was included in that survey you mentioned?
If the Washington Metro was (as that article said) "the only Brutalist design" to make that list of 150, I'd have to say that's a no.
These shirts/hats They have not Boston Strong ones too.
My point is who cares either way? Who outside of DC or Boston is wearing this apparel, hats or shirts?
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