One-Track Mind

For decades, Philip Ashforth Coppola has meticulously documented the New York City subway in a series of extraordinary drawings, detailing the terracotta mosaics, faience, and tile patterns that millions of riders pass by every day. Coppola's drawings are what Hyperallergic calls "the most encyclopedic history of the art and architecture of the New York City subway system." Along with Coppola's intricate ink drawings are anecdotes he assembled through painstaking research involving hundreds of hours poring through microfilms to discover the names behind the artisanship of what is rightly called New York's largest public art work—its legendary subway system.