The Redbirds trace their origins to 1959, with the debut of the R26, the first of nine closely related subway car types that became synonymous with New York's transit system.
The new store preserves the building's historic character-keeping original brick walls exposed-while layering in contemporary materials such as metallic finishes, reflective surfaces, and semi‑gloss flooring.
"We're constantly striving to strike a balance between work that respects academic rules of composition, established visual codes and good readability, with something more spontaneous, adventurous, playful, even naive."
The Grand Penn proposal would move Madison Square Garden across Seventh Avenue, onto or near the former Hotel Pennsylvania site, and use the freed-up space above Penn Station to build a much grander, roomier train hall.
"This project is symbolic of what we've done over the last 12 years, reshaping the streets and the city," Christophe Najovski, the city's deputy mayor in charge of green spaces, stated during the opening ceremony.
In that small 30-block zone last year, there were 486 reported crashes, injuring 76 cyclists, 108 pedestrians (one fatally) and 67 motorists, according to city stats. That's more than a crash every day, injuring more than 250 people.
The first three months of 2026 were among the three safest first-three-month periods since records started being kept at the dawn of the Automobile Age, with only 42 fatalities from car crashes in New York City.
The building, an office block with shops on the ground floor, is at the eastern end of Oxford Street, just north of Soho Square, and sits above the possible route of the Crossrail 2 railway, if/when it is eventually built.
The artwork, called We Move Through Scales of Blue, will comprise four photographic pieces installed alongside the escalators at both stations. As people go up and down, the images appear to shift and change.
Inspired by a reading of As You Like It, Judith Chernaik, an American writer living in London, conceived a plan to scatter poetry across the underground as the love-sick Orlando hangs sonnets through the Forest of Arden. Her simple idea took root below the sewers and spread to cities across the world. Poetry in Motion launched in New York in 1992, and today poems can be found on public transport in Dublin, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, Warsaw and Moscow.
