They were 86th!
First you saw them, now you don’t.
New tiles that appeared — then disappeared — from the 86th Street subway station had members of a local panel wondering whether shoddy workmanship was behind their disappearance.
But an investigation by us revealed that the rows of tiles on the platform level at the R station — the subject of a brief discussion during the January meeting of Community Board 10 — were removed because they had been damaged during delivery.
“They have already started falling off,” board member George Fontas had said at the meeting.
Not so, said Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials.
The tiles were taken down by the contractor between Jan. 14 and Jan. 16, according to agency spokeswoman Deirdre Parker, who added that workers will replace them this weekend.
The affected tiles are all on the Manhattan-bound side of the station, which is undergoing a $13.5 million, two-year renovation that also includes new gratings at street level. Cracks will also be repaired, as part of the effort to waterproof the bedraggled station, which had been in a state of disrepair for decades. Work began in January of 2010.
The station is used by 9,600 commuters a day.
Some of them are bound to be watching — and so will we — to make sure the work gets done in a timely matter.
