MTA – 23rd Street Subway Station

This subway station had always been one of my favorites to look at whenever I’m passing by on the N or R train.
In 2002, they decided to install «Memories of 23^rd Street», a sort of art exhibition on the walls. That’s right, the floating mosaic hats! If you look a few feet below the hats, you’ll see the names of the hat owners: residents and visitors of the Flatiron District in the 19^th and 20^th century, including Oscar Wilde, Houdini, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, etc. (They had a pretty famous hotel in the area.) When the iconic Flatiron Building was built, it was the tallest building in the neighborhood and supposedly created a wind tunnel on the streets. Many skirts and dresses were lifted in addition to people’s hats. It’s always fun to see people standing below the hats while waiting for the trains across the platform.
Oh and yes, they have both cellphone reception and free wifi at this station. This station also exits to Madison Square Park, Shake Shack, Eataly, Flatiron Building, a small pedestrian plaza in the streets, and a gorgeous view of the Empire State Building.

This train station is pretty awesome since it is one of the few train stations that have both service underground AND free WiFi! I don’t think I can ask for anything more.
My only problem is that during certain hours, the trains (N/​R) come less frequently and when it rain, the stairs are extra slippery. I have been a victim of slipping and falling on a rainy day. Also, there is nothing connecting the downtown and uptown side so you have to go out and swipe in again if you swipe in on the wrong side.

This is the station immediately near the Flatiron building, and there is WiFi throughout the station; that bumps it up a star.
It’s strictly a local station where N and R trains stop; there’s no underpass or any way to change direction once you’re in the station – so choose well! Being that the N and R are diagonal lines that go up to Times Square – before heading out to Queens – and down to Whitehall Street, you have many transfer opportunities along the way.
When I first came to the city, this was one of the stations along the BMT [N/​R] lines that still had large blue tiles on the walls; it may have been the plan at one time to cover all the old mosaic work in the stations and start «modernizing» them with crappy industrial-​looking panels.
Fortunately the mosaics weren’t ripped down, but just covered over; so a few years ago, this station was renovated and the original mosaic tiles could come out and play again! The change is that now the mosaic-​work features pictures of hats in tiles set into the walls; each has a small label beneath it with the name of the hat’s [famous] wearer. That’ll give you something to think about while you’re waiting for the train!