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Those new newsstands are fine as long as they are not being used to push the mom & pop news vendors out of their businesses.

However, if these stands are part of a chain, or a corporation that now has a franchise for all of the stands, then that is a bad thing. (And that is what happened with hot dog vendors in Central Park- they were all independent business people who could earn a living wage from their carts. Then the city decided to give a monopoly to the highest bidder. Now all the vendor work for minimum wage, working for the corp that won the franchise.)

I know that's not the discussion you wanted to have here, so sorry if I've disrupted things.

As for the design, modern can be nice, but I would have prefered an old New York look better. For example: check out the design of Philadelphia's new baseball stadium. It looks like an old-time ball park, rather than a modern stadium.

Lots of the bus shelters on Bway in the 100's

The newstands are individually leased, so not an issue.

As for old NY look -- the old newstands were plywood shacks -- any improvement in design is welcome as far as I am concerned!!!

I agree Mid C Frank, I live on the Upper West Side and the new bus shelter at 98th Street and B'way was just completed. Also keep in mind the new design has to deal with graffiti and it's removal. I guess stainless steel and glass is easier to clean.

I'm a tad shocked that they found a kind of glass that they think won't get scratch-fitti on it. I, personally, have no nostalgia for the days of graffitti at all.

These are a great improvement and they attempt to solve graffiti problems and issue with visibility/safety. In response to GothamTomato: In the past 15 years there has been a huge number of public-works-like architecture projects that fall into the "modern but old-timey" look. Instead of embracing modern, cities are embracing "safe modern" (this is especially true with stadiums). As more and more of these types of buildings arise in cities, they are all beginning to look very Disney-Worldish and the same. How boring.

"As more and more of these types of buildings arise in cities, they are all beginning to look very Disney-Worldish and the same. How boring."



Maybe, but more boring than the newsstand pictured above? To me that stand has no personality. It looks more like it belongs in a suburban shopping mall than NYC. But then much of NYC has been mall-ified in recent years.

As for old time ny looking like a wooden shack, the style I'm thinking of is one that would go with the style of architecture you see in Central Park, (like the great old lamp posts, etc.) or the onion dome of the Union Square subway station.

"Safe modern" regional styles were at least somewhat regional in their day. "New modernist" projects like the Federal courthouse building boom that started a decade ago and is still wrapping up -- where every one of those buildings has a beige finish, silver slats or spikes, an area of glass wall, and at least one major curved wall -- truly make every city look alike.

There is a difference between recyclable and recycled. Almost all materials are recyclable- steel, glass, plastic, wood, but that does not mean that the material has not been harvested from virgin rainforests! If the company guarantees that a percentage (or all) the material is recycled, then I would call the product earth friendly.

It seems to me that all the material in the product should be recyclable as well.

Ummm... everybody who says they like these new bus stops must not have actually used them. Just try standing under them in a drizzle. The old ones did not protect much (especially with the windy vents on the backsides). But these have an angled roof which is too small to protect much at all from the elements. It's actually worse than what they demolished to put these up. It may look nice, but I say city design should honor functionality much more. It's dismaying that the city's investing in these.

Oh, and the metal bus stop benches are also an affront, with very large, rude-looking dividers sticking up and looking so uncomfortable that I've never actually seen anyone sitting on them. Neither in a crowded stop now in a sparsely populated one with a very long wait....

Ack - "now" in the last sentence above should be "nor".

Sea — The dividers are there to discourage sleeping.

Someone told me there was the equivalent of the Mayor's Graffiti Task Force behind this move to create a uniform aesthetic throughout the five boroughs. Anybody heard of that?

aaron, I know. But they also discourage sitting. I've seen much better bench designs that discourage lying down (like in the parks). The whole design of the bench, including bottom slats, is ugly. And it doesn't go with the design of the bus shelter as a whole. And it's just one more thing that contributes to the lack of functionality of the whole thing. These seemed designed by non-New-Yorkers. Or by New Yorkers who don't take the bus.

This kind of project is always very popular in architecture schools, and often the winning design or a bunch of the designs are built. While these seem functional, I'd love to see more variety and designs that are more city-, or even better, site-specific.

Becky (non-New Yorker)

I've just seen a few more of these bus stops, and I noticed the benches are not all the same. My comments above apply only to the black tube-style seat separations that you can find, say, on 14th Street. But up on Broadway in the 80s, the benched have nice little silver dividers - and the seat areas also looked wider to me, though that might be an illusion. Anyway, they're not all awful.