Photo via Grim Santo's Flickr
When the city's iconic wooden benches get ripped from their cement roots, we get a little sad—remember the green park benches? R.I.P. And now in the latest effort to move the city into the future, the giant, blocky, wooden benches of our subway system are being replaced by stainless steel ones. According to the Daily News, they will "be installed in stations when they come up for major overhauls or more modest face-lifts." The new benches were already spotted at the R station at Whitehall Street in Manhattan.
According to the MTA, stainless steel is less costly to maintain. But the real bonus is here is getting rid of any bed bug-ridden wooden benches. And of course, we've known this day was coming for two years now—back in 2010, there were reports of prototypes entering the subway system, and it was noted that the wooden benches were not "hygienic."
