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Cornell University

Public History Initiative

Cornell Public History Initiative

A Culinary Subway

Natalia Gulick, Class of 2021, Architecture

A map of the New York Subway system used to satirize the food culture of New York. Each stop is a humorous reference of one sort or another, from Chopped Liver on the Lower East Side to Mixed Nuts on the Upper West Side and Cooked Books on Wall Street. Inset images include the Swedish Meatball Building, The Great Food Pyramids of the Bronx, and an Heimlich-spoof illustration of "What to do when someone is choking you on the subway."

The New York City Sub Culinary Map is a humorous subversion of the city’s subway system, where each station and landmark has been renamed to represent a food typical of the surrounding neighborhood, reflecting the mix of cultures that can be found throughout the sprawling metropolis. Beginning in September 2003, the creators of the map Rick Meyerowitz and Maira Kalman spent months visiting restaurants and grocers, as well as pouring through cookbooks and encyclopedias, to decide the name changes of the nearly six hundred labels on the original Metropolitan Transit Authority map.

Meyerowitz and Kalman’s eventual illustration became a scavenger hunt of apt captions and funny quips, printed in The New Yorker’s “The Food Issue” in September 2004. Viewers unacquainted with the city are able to enjoy Meyerowitz and Kalman’s clever wordplay – the iconic Statue of Liberty becomes “Green Goddess,” Penn Station becomes “Penne Station.” However, the better one understands the city and its history, the more fun one can have in unpacking the many changes in this map. Several stops along Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side, home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents, are named after posh cocktails, with the 86th Street hub labelled as “Upper Crust.” The East Village stop, originally home to Eastern European immigrants, is marked as “Pavlova,” a dessert named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Looking through the Sub Culinary Map, one can pour through hundreds of bits of culinary humor which highlight the diverse and multicultural strata of New York City.

Natalia Gulick graduated in 2020 and is currently a Master in Design Studies candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a concentration in Narratives. Her academic research lies in the intertwined histories of colonial exchanges and the archive as both a private institution and a public imposition, specifically within Latin America and the Caribbean.

Source

New York City Sub Culinary Map, Rick Meyerowitz & Maira Kalman, The New Yorker, September 2004. Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection, #8548, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, ID# 403.01

https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343346

Bibliography

de Silva, Cara “Fusion City: From Mt. Olympus Bagels to Puerto Rican Lasagna and Beyond.” In Gastropolis: Food and New York City, edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch, by Lomonaco Michael, 1-12. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Meyerowitz, Rich “The New York City Sub Culinary Map.” https://www.rickmeyerowitz.com/rick-maira/new-york-sub-culinary-map/.

The New Yorker: The Food Issue, September 6, 2004.

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Food
Maps
New York City
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Archival Finds