File:Window South Passageway (8684217196).jpg

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. Shotz has maintained a studio near the station in Red Hook for over ten years, and has long been fascinated by the history that can be found in the cobblestoned streets and old factory buildings. The area’s maritime history is at a remove from the casual viewer and Shotz brings it to the forefront, first, in the station’s mezzanine level, seen by arriving travelers who make their way from the elevated platform to escalators. There are 26 windows etched with silver reflective ink in layers of glass that create a prismatic effect as one passes them. Each features a different historic nautical map of the waters that are in the general direction the viewer is facing.