#MapMondays – City of Women
“NONSTOP METROPOLIS,” BY REBECCA SOLNIT AND JOSHUA JELLY-SCHAPIRO. SUBWAY ROUTE SYMBOLS ® METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
Rebecca Solnit's City of Women, reimagining New York City's iconic subway map, with each of the 472 stations renamed for notable women tied to locations across the metropolis. Names include Emma Lazarus at South Ferry, Jane Jacobs at West 4th, Lady Gaga at Bedford Ave, Aaliyah at Myrtle Ave, Sonia Sotomayor at Soundview, Susan B. Anthony at Canal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Hunts Point.
Solnit explained her reaction to the city's gendered geography and inspiration to create the map:
“How does it impact our imaginations that so many places in so many cities are named after men and so few after women? What kind of landscape do we move through when streets and parks and statues and bridges and even rivers are gendered—
Astor Place, Lafayette Street, Madison Avenue, Lincoln Center, Washington Square, the Frick, Rockefeller Center, Penn Station, the Bronx, the Hudson—and it’s usually one gender, and not another? What kind of silence arises in places that so seldom speak of and to women? This map was made to sing the praises of the extraordinary women who have, since the beginning, been shapers and heroes of this city that has always been, secretly, a City of Women. And why not the subway?
This is a history still emerging from underground, a reminder that it’s all connected, and that we get around.”