Meryl Streep gets special NYC birthday surprise: A subway stop
It’s a Big Apple birthday greeting for a big star of the silver screen.
Straphangers passing through Manhattan’s 72nd Street 1, 2, 3 station today will see the stop has been renamed “72 Streep” — on both the uptown and downtown platforms — to celebrate the birthday of multi-Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep, who turns 72 today, The Post has learned.
“It was one of these ideas that you have and you’re just like, ‘That’s so perfect’ — and she’s a national treasure, so everyone’s going to love it,” said 57-year-old artist and photographer Adrian Wilson. He planned and installed the display along with his artist friend Matt Duncan, all with the use of easily removable stickers on the last “t” of the station’s signs.
Although Streep is his first tribute to a living celebrity, Wilson, who originally hails from England, is no stranger to turning subway stations into quirky artistic expressions.
He spent years anonymously transforming city platforms, and even above-ground street signs, into memorials for recently deceased icons.
He used stickers to transform the Prince Street N/R tilework to read “PRINCE RIP” following the death of musical legend Prince in 2016. He paid homage to Aretha Franklin in 2018 at the Franklin Street 1 stop in Tribeca. More recently, alongside Duncan, he altered the mosaic tile signs at the 50th Street C/E station to read “RUTH ST.” for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In late 2020, Wilson outed himself as the creator of the works. He had become an American citizen and no longer feared criminal charges, though his subway and street sign art all count as vandalism. (Wilson previously told The Post he’d been arrested twice for trespassing and graffiti, but the cases were dismissed.)
“It’s nice to not do a dead person — and I know as a gentleman you’re not meant to reveal a woman’s age — but it’s everywhere,” said Wilson of this most recent Streep installation.
72 Streep quickly made its way to Wilson’s Instagram account, @plannedalism, early this morning — with photos and video yielding comments from his 12,100 followers, including “One [of] the best for sure,” “No way!” and “this is fantastic!”
“You know there’s some things that you do that you know that everyone’s going to love,” said Wilson. “It’s a fun thing and it’s what we need.”
And he hopes that Streep, should she catch wind of this display, enjoys it as well.
“This is a gift from New York to one of our favorite people,” said Wilson.
