1974 Charysyn / Vignelli Station Map of New York City Commuter Rail System

This is Joan Charysyn's own copy of her 1974 station map of the New York City Commuter Rail network, designed during her tenure under Massimo Vignelli at Vignelli Associates and Unimark International. Similar to the famous 'Vignelli Map' of the New York City Subway, which Charysyn also helped design, this work exemplifies 'beauty in simplicity.'

A Closer Look

Covering the New York City Metropolitan or Tri-State Area, this map includes seven rail services managed by or in partnership with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, including the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH), and Staten Island Rapid Transit (now Staten Island Railway, which for mapping purposes is included with the New York City subway nowadays), and the predecessors to today's Metro-North Railroad and New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit). Several features on the map were recent creations, including the 'new' Penn Station, Amtrak, and the World Trade Center, which only opened the previous year.

Like the Vignelli New York City Subway map on which it is modeled, this map achieves the near-impossible in presenting the most essential information to commuters, making sense of a jumble of dozens of stations, seven commuter rail systems (most with multiple branches and both express and local service), plus connections to interurban service with Amtrak, ferry and bus connections, and alternate bus services. Charysyn erred on the side of simplicity wherever possible, too much so for some people's tastes. No mention is made of schedules, fares, express versus local services, connections with the subway or buses, or other information that might be deemed essential to travelers (though phone numbers are provided for the various services and, in theory, timetables and fare information would be available at the station). The LIRR appears as a uniform blue, with no visual distinction between its various branches, and geography is distorted for the sake of expediency (for instance, the Mineola, Hempstead, and West Hempstead stations are, in reality, in an almost-perfect north-south alignment rather than offset as here).

Most egregious of all, to some at least, is the shrinkage of Manhattan, the destination of most commuters, to a comically diminutive size (an inversion of its inflation on the Vignelli subway map), and its blocky, cartoonish appearance, as is also the case with Long Island and Staten Island. In defense against these fulminations, one might point out that such information is utterly unnecessary for daily commuters regularly taking the same route. Despite its utilitarian benefits, in the years since this map's creation, the MTA's official maps have deviated from its design principles, though some occasional 'schematics' put out by it and partners (such as the Port Authority) are highly similar in style to the map seen here.

What Makes a Map a Map?

This work and the earlier Vignelli/Charysyn subway map expand our understanding of what a map is or could be. Rather than attempt to 'realistically' represent one of the densest population centers on the planet to scale with 'proper' distances between stations and all or even most of the potential information a commuter might need, it instead operates like a narrowly focused but easy-to-use infographic, getting the commuter from their origin station to their destination station; the commuter is left to their own devices for everything happening before and after that point, which in most cases is perfectly sufficient (especially for regular commuters, not tourists). At the same time, it retains the rough 'shape' of the rail networks and the geography of the Tri-State area, still resembling a 'typical' map for familiarity's sake.

The Piecemeal Assemblage of the MTA

This map was produced at a time when mass transit in New York City was in a state of crisis and flux. Railroad companies were falling into insolvency one after another. In order to maintain passenger service, the federal government oversaw the consolidation of interurban passenger service into Amtrak and of freight service into Conrail. Suburban commuter railroads (such as portions of the New York Central Railroad and New Haven Railroad) were a different category entirely, somewhat more resilient than interurban passenger lines (which were hit by losses to airlines as well as automobiles), but which still faced an uphill struggle to survive. The Long Island Railroad was effectively bankrupt since 1949 and was acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which merged with the New York Central in 1968 (forming the 'Penn Central').

The New York City Subway System (merged as the New York City Transit Authority in the 1950s) was also struggling, as fare increases were required to pay for repairs to aging infrastructure just as automobile ownership was skyrocketing, abetted by bridges and tunnels built during the Depression (the city's longtime urban planning mastermind, Robert Moses, heavily prioritized automobiles over mass transit). With a financial Sword of Damocles hanging over its head, the NYCTA struggled to combat issues like delays, graffiti, and crime. Even the 1973 Oil Shock, which should have provided ample disincentive to driving, only temporarily and marginally increased ridership on mass transit.

The address these issues, the MTA was created in 1965 by the State of New York as a public benefit corporation (operating buses and managing bridges and tunnels as well) and has continued to face financial difficulties ever since, though with improvements in service and ridership. The MTA gradually took control of commuter lines leading northwards out of Manhattan, consolidating them as the Metro-North in the early 1980s. Similarly, the State of New Jersey created NJ Transit in the late 1970s to handle commuter rail and bus traffic into Manhattan; due to financial and political disputes between New York and New Jersey, it and the Port Authority were kept separate from the MTA (much to the chagrin of many commuters, whose lives would be made much easier by a single, integrated system with a single payment system).

Provenance

This example of the map of Joan Charysyn's own copy. It is one of two copies given to Charysyn by the MTA. Charysyn gave the map to New York transit author and historian Peter Lloyd in 2009. We acquired it from Lloyd via an intermediary. The map will be accompanied by a letter of provenance, as well as photographs of Charysyn with this map.

Publication History and Census

This map was designed by Joan Charysyn, a young female colleague of Massimo Vignelli (who is typically credited for the map's design) at Unimark International, and printed for the MTA in 1974. The OCLC (5446496) only records the much smaller folding edition passed out to commuters. However, the present work is a large-format station map, of which a very small handful survive (perhaps 3 or 4), as they were generally destroyed after being replaced.