This is the last, or at least among the last, Lawrence Street signs on the BMT platform I’ve always known as Lawrence Street. The station name was wiped from the MTA subway maps last year, when a connection to the IND A/C/F trains at the Jay Street/Metrotech station was opened. (And that station had for years been known as just plain Jay Street; until 1969, a transfer was available from the first stop of the Myrtle Avenue El there). Lawrence Street is now also called Jay Street/Metrotech.
Here’s a little mind blower for you. Whenever I’d go by this station on the train as a kid, I’d notice the remarkable station signs, which featured a large L and the rest of the word, awrence, in much smaller type. Of course the standard black and white signs came in much later.
So, pretty much the only claim to fame this small street had, which runs for 3 or 4 blocks in downtown Brooklyn, has been taken away from it. When I was a kid, my father and I would visit a camera shop on Lawrence and Willoughby. It could have been a Willoughby’s.