It doesn’t look like Helvetica

I thought most of it is Standard Medium aka Akzidenz Grotesk – but then, I’ve never been to NY.

In his article for Design Observer, Michael Bierut wrote:
Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli, developed a signage plan […] The typeface they recommended, the then-exotic, imported-from-Switzerland Helvetica Medium, was unavailable; they settled for something at hand in the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority train shop called Standard Medium.

Ha! Intriguing. As a counter-example, Gary Hustwit, in his film Helvetica, briefly focuses on some NYC subway signage, attributing it to Vignelli (and, of course, implying that it's Helvetica). The plot thickens.

What happened is that -- although originally all signage was done in Standard Medium which is a 'version' of Akzidenz-Grotesk -- subsequently they switched to Helvetica for the signs. So originally it was all Akzidenz-Grotesk, but now there's also a lot of Helvetica.

There's a nice explanation of how the New York City subway switched from Standard Medium (a version of Akzidenz Grotesk) to Helvetica in this New York Times "Cityroom" post.

Full link:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/how-helvetica-took-over-the...