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This station is going to be a big hit, naysayers notwithstanding. Let's hope they can keep it vandalism free.

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The rest of my Flickr set starts here.

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all my other criticisms aside, i think the ceiling looks horrible. why didn't they stick with the rendering?
 
Perhaps it could be improved by texturizing and painting the ceiling to resemble sandstone. It would have a tomb like feel to it.
 
compared to other stations it looks good...
 
Riders traveling through the station after 10pm Monday night got a first hand view of the hidden columns as the wraps were removed from them in preparation of Tuesday unveiling.

The station was scrub almost from top to bottom excepted for the next lights fixtures. Floor still needs another cleaning in many areas. The jail area floor saw floor cleaning and needs more work also.

The tag area saw a fresh coat of paint, but you can still see the area that saw removal of the tag. The wall area is rough to the hand compare to rest of the wall. I pointed this out to the GM after I gave him a CD with the before and after tag photo's to give to this staff for records.

There are 5 or more cameras coming after all pitch point are done first system wide.

The ceiling framing received a coat of black paint also.

According to TTC Chair, a second entrance will build over the next 18 months.

The old Subway security cameras, hanging conduit and the 2 media screens are history.

From my general observation, next to no Politicians took a real look at the station or columns. Photo op was the thing of the day with hand shaking. Less than 50% of riders using the subway paid any attention to the new columns or had a look at they while they waited for the trains.

Oh!! the p3's was the rage of the day also.

Up today, TTC and the city have used a figure of 1.5-1.6 million riders use the system daily. Now it is 1.7 million

I had a supervisor walk up to me to tell me I could not take pictures on TTC property. I said for her to go and see the boys in blue down the platform or wait until the GM and the Chair show up as why I and the rest of the public are allow to take pictures on TTC property now. She walked away. This a real issue with communication from top down to staff as was what is allow regarding photo shoots.

I can only rate this station as B-. Hope they one takes away the down fall from this station and improved on them for other stations.

No safety barriers installed.

I was told UT banners were found under the platform edge out of sight of the public during the station cleaning.
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Will need a few more cleaning
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Needs more cleaning and the new tiles are dirty.
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Looking south from stairs
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TTC staff and I had a laugh that this one as it is saying post me
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Looking from the south end
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These do nothing at all for me and blemishes top to bottom on them compare to the other columns.
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Still can see the original area where the paint was strip to remove the tag area. They made a large area for a small tag compare to the large tag on the end that had a small area removed.
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I think the red Chinese pillars work - while simple, the colour adds a nice accent in an area with overall very subdued colours.

When I was down there around 6 PM yesterday there were an assortment of authority-figure types and none objected at all regarding photo taking - there were quite a number of people down there with cameras.

By in large the people that I watched arrive at platform level from the mezzanine smiled when they saw how it looked, and a lot of people were looking intently at the various elements of it all. Sure some people did seem to pay any heed to it, but there will always be that type out there. Bully for them for getting everything out of life!

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I saw the station last night. It's weird and just doesn't reflect Toronto; it's something I could imagine Sadam Hussein would've approved of and had built in Bagdad. It feels Middle-Eastern. Just bizarre. Very tacky and vulgar.

Does it really reflect the new ROM? No.
 
so you see, stations with art as something that reflects a dictatorship society????????? :confused::confused::confused:
 
This should be move to Transportation & Infrastructure > Museum Station since this is the main thread today. Otherwise move Transportation & Infrastructure > Museum Station here.
 
Welcome to McDisneyland.

This looks ridiculous. If this is the TTC's most photogenic station we're in big trouble.
 
It's turned out better than expected. I still wish they'd put the roof back, but it certainly adds interest to the station. I'm sure the school groups going to the ROM will love it.

That's great news, drum, about the second entrance. A southern entrance at the tip of Queen's Park near the monument would be great for getting to St. Mike's and U of T along Hoskin. It'd also add a little more life to that section of the park.




Next stop: Platform to turn heads - even a Torontonian's



JOHN BARBER

jbarber@globeandmail.com


April 9, 2008

The train squealed loudly to a stop. A window in its side slid open to reveal a uniformed attendant. He leaned out and looked intently in one direction, then another, sweeping an authoritative gaze up and down the bustling platform.

"Whaddya think?" I asked.

"I like it!" he replied.

The window slid closed. The train squealed off.

Other travellers paid less attention. Some looked up to wonder about the fuss at normally placid Museum Station, where dignitaries and camera crews jostled for their share of the new view at its official unveiling. Others stared ahead in classic Toronto style, deadly disengaged.

But even they won't fail to notice eventually. Sculptures of totemic bears, mummies and ancient warriors now line up impressively where bland tiled pillars used to be - two ranks of them, standing back to back, gazing balefully at the fast-passing modern world, northbound and southbound.

They make their greatest impression when reviewed as a corps from a fast-passing train. Up close, they are impersonal. The bright colours that animated the concept drawings darkened into shades of dun on the platform, the glitter subsided into purposeful epoxy. The station wall the new figures gaze upon is largely painted concrete.

They are silent witnesses to clever budget cuts. But their suffering only serves to ennoble them. Like magical beings trapped in a shabby cage, they are fatally charismatic. Avatars with attitude.

But they are also pioneers - not only the first fruit of a plan for thematic transformations of two other downtown stations connected with major cultural institutions, but also a so-far unique example of an entirely new way of getting cool things done in Toronto.

The nearest precedent of the Arts on Track program that made over Museum Station was philanthropist Judy Matthews's contribution of $1-million a decade ago to enable a design-led reconstruction of St. George Street as it passes through the University of Toronto. Ms. Matthews and her financier husband, Wilmot, appear prominently in the list of donors who helped finance the station. But so do another dozen families, foundations and firms, including the foundation named for the late Budd Sugarman, the last unofficial mayor of Yorkville.

What was once freak - philanthropists joining with governments to make basic improvements to public spaces - is becoming normal. With Arts on Track, the Toronto Community Foundation has developed one adventurous donor's gambit into a whole new city-building process. Although the TTC and the province provided the lion's share of the $5-million required to make over the station platform, nothing could have happened without the private money assembled by the community foundation.

"It's our first P3 - a public philanthropic process," TCF chair Rahul Bhardwaj boasted at the opening.

The only potentially controversial aspect of this kind of partnership could be its aestheticism - the bold proposition that lifting spirits by sharing culture is socially useful. But Arts on Track makes no apologies on that score. No gesture could be more democratic than making a big splash at a subway station through which hundreds of thousands of bored commuter pass every day.

"Public spaces say a lot about who we are," Mr. Bhardwaj said, "and this one didn't speak well."

Museum Station no longer trash-talks Toronto. Instead it glares forbiddingly. Culture is alive in the subway. Eye contact remains risky.
 
The "Egyptian" dude looks more like a football player, or a reject from a Cecil B. DeMille movie, than anything you're ever likely to see in a museum.

Tut. Tut.
 
All they've done is made this into a less cohesive, more inconvenient station and increased the rick of passenger injury with tacky novelties people will eventually get tired of.

I'm all for a unique look at each station, but it could be done in a sophisticated, tasteful way that ensures all of the stations fall under some general TTC branding guidelines.
 

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