Decoding the colors of the globes outside New York City subway stations

Street-level subway entrances have undergone many changes since the first train made its inaugural ride at the now-shuttered City Hall station in October 1904.

Graceful, iron-shingled kiosks topped by a dome or peaked roof disappeared in favor of simple railed staircases. Signage noting the IRT, IND, and BMT was replaced by signs with a unified typeface plus standardized train letters and numbers.

And 40 years ago, the iron railings of subway entrances and exits were suddenly topped with globe lights in red, yellow, and green colors.

You may have never noticed these colored globe lights. They’re the kind of street furniture that city residents pass every day and don’t always register, especially when rushing to catch a train.

But it seems like the vast majority of street-level subway entrances are flanked by these globes, and it’s not simply for ornamentation. So what is their purpose, and what are the different colors supposed to tell riders?

First, let’s go back to the subway of the 1980s, when many stations had a human sitting inside a booth taking a rider’s cash in exchange for a token to gain access the platform.

“Color-coding of entrance globes began in the early 1980s to help customers determine which entrances were open and had a manned booth,” states the New York Transit Museum in a 2022 Facebook post.

“Originally, green indicated a 24-hour token booth, yellow meant a part-time booth, and red meant entrance limited or exit only.” Yellow lights, however, were discontinued to make the color-coding system easier to understand, the post explained.

MTA officials weren’t just trying to be helpful for the sake of improved customer service. The early 1980s city was a more crime-ridden place, and subway riders were prime targets.

In a 2002 article about the color-coded globes, New York Times writer Randy Kennedy noted that they were installed “mostly to try to prevent muggings” but ended up causing a lot of confusion.

Then in the 1990s, the colored globe system was thrown a loop, as Metrocards began to replace coin tokens. Turnstiles that allowed passengers to enter a station via Metrocard were installed at what had been exit-only subway stops. The red globes, therefore, “were no longer needed,” stated the Transit Museum.

Today, green globes seem to dominate the cityscape. But you can still find red globes outside some subway exits, like the two in this post. (The second photo was taken on Lower Broadway near Trinity Church; the fourth photo at Grand Central Terminal on 42nd Street.)

There’s one more feature about the globes worth decoding. Riders became concerned that the colored globes didn’t give off enough light, and without proper illumination, station entrances and exits could become more dangerous.

So MTA officials stopped using full-colored globes in favor of what they call “half-moons,” which have a colored top and an opaque bottom, explained Kennedy.

Of course today, in the era of phone apps that can tell you almost everything you want to know about a subway station before you get there, the old-school globe system seems like a quaint anachronism.