{"id":26506,"date":"2017-03-09T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T08:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=26506"},"modified":"2017-03-09T00:01:42","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T08:01:42","slug":"subway-tiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/subway-tiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Subway Tiles? Not in My Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"White<\/a>
Subway tiles — and grimy grout — in Budapest’s Oktogon station. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Subway tiles. You see them\u00a0everywhere — in people’s houses and all over TV shows like “Property Brothers,” “Flip or Flop,” and “House Hunters Renovation.”<\/p>\n

But there’s one place you’ll never see them\u00a0— in my kitchen. And one other place — my bathroom. That’s because subway tiles remind me of actual subways — the\u00a0oily, greasy, steamy, sooty, jam-packed subways of my New York city young adulthood.<\/p>\n

A Pop of Glamour?<\/h5>\n

For me, subway tiles and the century-old\u00a0subterranean transit systems they evoke are no way to add a\u00a0pop of glamour to a\u00a0kitchen or bath. Subway tiles\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The entrance to the Oktogon station features white subway tiles with decorative black tile borders. The station dates to 1896. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

suggest\u00a0grim, florescent-lit underground caves\u00a0where once-shiny tiles are now chipped around the edges and\u00a0held together by\u00a0grout that’s been grimy for decades.<\/p>\n

Some of the world’s undergrounds\u00a0make a valiant attempt\u00a0at art\u00a0— Moscow’s is one. Other subways are relatively new and sleek — San Francisco’s.\u00a0But most metro\u00a0stations are battle scarred and antique. New York’s. Budapest’s.<\/p>\n

Still, subway tile evokes a certain nostalgia for me. A 2015 visit to Budapest took me<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A battered balustrade on a sidewalk entrance to\u00a0the Oktogon station. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

on a sentimental journey back in time to my\u00a0car-less youth as a twenty-something\u00a0New Yorker. I caught a train at Budapest’s Oktogon station built in 1896 and there they\u00a0were — the battered metal\u00a0balustrades, the low ceilings — the subway tiles.<\/p>\n

As a young, impecunious New Yorker, I needed to get where I was going fast and cheap. So I, along with millions of other New Yorkers, was happy to crowd myself, into\u00a0shabby,\u00a0pre-World War II subway stations and trains. Subway tiles —\u00a0cheap, sanitized, institutional — were part of the commute\u00a0experience, to be suffered through. Endured, not admired.<\/p>\n

Trendy Subway Tiles<\/h5>\n

Avocado green appliances were a thing in the ’70s. Hollywood vanity lights made it big\u00a0in the ’90s. Granite countertops (like mine) scream the 2000s. And now, subway tiles are all the rage. They’re popular today, but\u00a0in 2030 will subway\u00a0tiled walls look as dated and pathetic\u00a0as an avocado kitchen range does in 2017?<\/p>\n

More about home decorating\u00a0at “Getting a New Kitchen? Here Are the Five Things I Like Best About Mine.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “The Dracena Is Dead. Long Live the Dracena.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Experience the subway tile trend at “Househunters Renovation,”<\/a>\u00a0“Flip or Flop”<\/a>\u00a0and “Property Brothers.”<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Up<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Subway<\/a><\/p>\n

Subway tiles. You see them everywhere — in people’s houses and all over HGTV. But there’s one place you’ll never see them — my kitchen. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[470,653,1877,1875,1091,1495,1188,1878,1879,1880,33],"class_list":["post-26506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-architecture","tag-arts-and-crafts","tag-bathroom","tag-budapest","tag-cities","tag-europe","tag-house","tag-interior-design","tag-kitchens","tag-subway-tiles","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}