Search results
BEGINNING in the 1970s, city kids swept up in the new trend of scribbling graffiti on the outside of subway cars gathered on a bench in the 149th Street-Grand Concourse station in the Bronx...
@149st derives its name from the last existing writer's bench during the New York City subway graffiti movement. 149th Street Grand Concourse, a subway station in the Bronx located on the 2 and 5 lines.
Documentation of New York City subway graffiti history. Featuring graffiti artist biographies, interviews and artwork.
21 sty 2022 · The term is borrowed from the New York subway generation and the legendary “Writers Bench,” a subway station on 149th Street where writers congregated to exchange stories and critique graffiti from several different lines as they rolled through the station.
Writers from all over the city congregated at a bench located at the back of the uptown platform. They came to meet, make plans, sign black books and settle disputes. The main activity was watching art on the passing trains (known as benching). The writers would admire and criticize the latest paintings.
This passageway has mosaics that say “N.Y. Central Lines” and was completed in 1920 as part of a platform extension project and designed to connect with a never-built 149 Street Super Station that the New York Central Railroad (that crosses over the subway platforms in this area) planned to build.
These were like haunts for writers, places for artistic exchange—149th Street and Grand Concourse in the South Bronx, the bridge at City Hall, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, these were just some of the benches that offered a good view of the new works debuting out of the yards.
