The murals that graced the pedestrian pathway in the 191st Street subway station in Washington Heights made it a popular Instagram spot in the city, one that was known internationally.

But since the murals were painted in 2015, graffiti artists have scrawled all over them. And this past weekend, the city painted over it all.

"To be honest, it did need a paint job, right? But what it needed was for the murals to be maintained. The murals were gorgeous," Led Black, the founder of a blog called The Uptown Collective, said. "They were important to this community and they celebrated this community."

Commuters NY1 spoke to said they appreciate the city trying to clean up a troubled tunnel filled with trash and drug paraphernalia.

In fact, NY1 watched a person using a needle shortly after sanitation crews left.

"That's really nice," commuter Altagracia Paulino said. "About time they do something for us."

Usually, she said, it was "really bad."

"It was so dark. There is a lot of garbage there and sometimes there were homeless [people]," Paulino said.

City Councilwoman Carmen De La Rosa said that "painting the walls doesn't solve the underlying issues of lack of maintenance, lack of services for people that are living in the tunnel — addiction services."

De La Rosa said she was blindsided by the decision from the city Department of Transportation, which oversees the tunnel, to paint it this past weekend without notification.

"When I woke up on Saturday morning and realized that tunnel had been painted over, I did panic," De La Rosa said. "I felt like a part of the history and rich culture of our community had been erased."

After the city painted the tunnel, it became a blank canvass for anyone to come in and put whatever they wanted on the wall.

But it apparently won't be like that for long.

The city Department of Transportation says officials will work with members of the community and artists to bring back the large, colorful murals commuters are used to seeing.

More police patrols, better lighting and security cameras are also promised.

"This is a priority for me because I understand the symbolic meaning behind this cultural mural," the commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, Ydanis Rodriguez, said.