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After a two-year rehabilitation project, Brooklyn’s Smith-9 Sts Station reopened on Fri., April 26, 2013, restoring F and G service to the Red Hook, Gowanus and Carroll Gardens communities.

Artist Alyson Shotz has created a series of artworks for the Smith-9th Streets Station, which uses the local maritime history of the surrounding Gowanus and Red Hook communities. At the station entrance on 9th Street, four large transom windows are etched with what appears to be an elegant line drawing, but which is actually a historic plan of a boat hull, built in Brooklyn around 1770. The piece functions both as an abstract drawing and a marker for this ship building activity that once dominated the neighborhood. The rear wall of the station building also may seem like an abstract line drawing created in stainless steel against a vivid blue tile mosaic background. However, as one moves closer, it is revealed as a nautical map, with numbers for depth and letters for directions. The mosaic map was adapted from a 1779 nautical map of New York Harbor as seen from the shoreline of Brooklyn.