Astor Place station

When you descend into the Astor Place station, you are entering a piece of transit history that opened in nineteen oh four as one of the original twenty-eight stations in the New York City subway system. The station walls feature unique yellow faience plaques depicting beavers, a direct nod to John Jacob Astor, the business mogul who built his immense fortune on the beaver pelt trade. These tiles were created by the Grueby Faience Company, a firm otherwise celebrated for its fine art pottery during the Arts and Crafts movement. While these beavers remain today, they serve as a stark reminder of the massive scale of the fur industry that once dominated the region's economy and fundamentally altered its local wildlife populations.