Museum Station is pretty cool, yes — but how cool depends on who you ask. In a recent article on the 14 coolest subway stations in the world, Web Urbanist selected Toronto's artifact-themed subway stop alongside beauties like Kievskaya Station in Moscow, Stockholm's Tunnelbana, and Nuevos Ministerios in Madrid. A similar but older list from Designboom also featured Museum as one of the world's most interesting examples of subway architecture. And, of course, in our own post about the subject just over a week ago, Museum picked up a lot of nominations as Toronto's nicest.

But for all the love the Diamond+Schmidt-designed space gets, there's a healthy contingent of folks who aren't such big fans. They cite the fact that the station has an unfinished and hokey feel to it, almost like IKEA furniture that's all veneer and no substance. I tend to fall into this group myself, if only because I'll never believe that Museum can compare to Dupont or even Yorkdale stations.

To me, Museum Station is a bit like Steve Madden shoes: on the shelf they look just great, but once you peer at them closely, there's an unmistakably cheap quality that's not quite hidden by the stylish design. What do you think? Is Museum worth all the international fuss? Or is all the attention because photos tend to make the station look cooler than it actually is?

Hat tip to Spacing Magazine, who shared the list on Twitter earlier today.

Photo by Kiril Strax in the blogTO Flickr pool