History: The New York City Subway, United States

• Artwork
Many stations are decorated with intricate ceramic tile work, some of it dating back to 1904 when the subway first opened. The subway tile artwork tradition continues today. The "Arts for Transit" program oversees art in the subway system. Permanent installations, such as sculpture, mosaics, and murals; photographs displayed in lightboxes, and musicians performing in stations encourage people to use mass transit. In addition, commissioned art displayed in stations and "art cards", some displaying poetry, are in many of the trains themselves in unused advertisement fixture slots. Some of the art is by internationally known artists such as Elizabeth Murray's Blooming, displayed at Lexington Avenue / 59th Street station.
• Accessibility
Since the majority of the system was built before 1990, the year the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went into effect, many New York City Subway stations were not designed to be handicapped-accessible. Since then, elevators have been built in newly constructed stations to comply with the ADA. (Most grade-level stations required little modification to ADA standards.) In addition, the MTA identified "key stations," high-traffic and/or geographically important stations, which must conform to the ADA when they are extensively renovated. As of June 2011, there are 89 currently accessible stations; many of them have AutoGate access.