page_title: New York City Subway map
section_title: Early maps
hierarchical_section_title: New York City Subway map / History / Early maps
context_page_description: Many transit maps for the New York City Subway have been designed since the subway's inception in 1904. Because the subway was originally built by three separate companies, an official map for all subway lines was not created until 1940, when the three companies were consolidated under a single operator. Since then, the official map has undergone several complete revisions, with intervening periods of comparative stability.
  The current iteration of the New York City Subway map dates from a design first published in 1979. The official map has evolved gradually under the control of the Marketing and Corporate Communications Department of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The 1979 design was created by the MTA Subway Map Committee, chaired by John Tauranac, which outsourced the graphic design of the map to Michael Hertz Associates.
context_section_description: Original maps for the privately opened Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), which opened in 1904, showed subway routes as well as elevated routes. However, IRT maps did not show Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) routes; conversely, BMT maps did not show IRT routes, even after the Dual Contracts between the IRT and BMT. In fact, even in 1939, the year before the unification of the IRT, BMT, and Independent Subway System (IND) into one entity, maps by private businesses were still being printed showing only the routes of one company. The three subway companies also published their own maps, showing their own routes.
  Routes were not distinguished from each other on subway maps until 1958. The first route maps were aesthetically pleasing, but had the perception of being more geographically inaccurate than the diagrams today. The design of the subway map by Massimo Vignelli, published by the MTA between 1972 and 1979, has since become recognized in design circles as a modern classic. However, the MTA deemed the map flawed due to its placement of geographical elements, specifically in the sense that elements only ran horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. By contrast, the Hertz map, which replaced the Vignelli design in 1979, contained elements that were more curved and "organic looking" while clarifying the nuances and complexities of the three former systems. The Hertz design, first created by Michael Hertz, remains in use with some stylistic differences and updates reflecting subway expansions since then.
  In 1985, with the subway's elimination of double-lettered routes, the map also drastically changed; routes on the maps became less straight and more circular, a design that persists today. "Trunk lines" were rearranged to be one color, rather than the multicolored routes shown on the former Vignelli maps.
caption: A map for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), created in 1924.
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