Toynbee Tile

New York, NY - Jodi - Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 : goo

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Toynbee tile, West Broadway and 6th Avenue, New York City

In NYC to celebrate her fiftieth birthday, my mom and I saw Manhattan the right way: on foot. One unseasonably warm afternoon, we were walking up 6th Avenue near Broadway and noticed this odd plaque embedded in the sidewalk.

Though we knew Kubrick’s name, we had no idea what “Toynbee idea” meant and couldn’t fathom how Jupiter figured into things. I snapped the above photograph and chalked the whole thing up to eccentric NYC graffiti.

Wikipedia now also presents thorough coverage. The most plausible explanation for the tiles? Toynbee likely refers to Arnold J. Toynbee, an English historian who chronicled the cyclical nature of human civilization, and Kubrick is, of course, Stanley Kubrick of 2001: A Space Odessey fame. According to Wikipedia, the only purported connection between the two men is via Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Toynbee Convector,” in which humankind is required to think futuristically in order to survive, and Kubrick’s reference to colonizing Jupiter in the Odessey movies. The tiles, then, may allude to a radical measure for preserving human life; whether such a drastic message carries an underlying warning about the pace of our progress is unknown.

Wikipedia (Toynbee Tiles) also notes that many of the tiles are routinely being destroyed by regular road maintenance, and “[a]t the present time, there is no public or private agency dedicated to conserving Toynbee tiles. Many tiles now exist only as photographs taken before their destruction.” Without knowing it on that afternoon in New York City, I was documenting an image from a transient urban art project.

In Manhattan, the natural tendency is to look up, to gape at the towering columns of steel and glass. I’m glad my mom and I also managed to cast an eye downward, to appreciate what was to be found underfoot.

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