I really shouldn’t reveal where it is (and neither should you), lest the Department of Transportation make quick work of it, but this is one of the very few porcelain/enamel and metal 1950s-era signs remaining in NYC.
These signs were the first to use the Highway Gothic font, which is currently being phased out in favor of Clearview. They competed for primacy with the older Humpback signs, until all were wiped out by the vinyl street sign incursion in 1964.
(Update: the porcelain sign has been removed, and the lane isn’t identified by a street sign these days.)
10/31/13
4 comments
From the Google Maps street view, it looks like a private street with the old gate at the head of the lane. Probably why the DOT never got its grubby hands on this beauty.
I never remember seeing any of these street signs growing up in northeast Queens in the1960s, but I vividly remember their replacement blue on white backgound signs which had none of the charm of these earlier signs. These signs do remind me of some of the signs that were in Nassau County when we moved there in the early 1970s. It seemed like every incorporated village in Nassau had their own different set of signs, the most unusual I remember being in Hewlett Harbor and or Hewlett Bay Park, where the signs were merely green painted posts placed in the ground with white capitalized block letter running horizonitally down the post announcing the cross street, and the other side of the post paralell to the road being traveled on, contained the actual name of the road you were on. These signs were charming but I don’t know how effective they were – or are as they still are in existence – in designating the winding roads in those areas.
Amazing, this sign is more than 50 yrs old and looks wonderful while the vinyl signs that replaced them are worn out in some cases in less than 10-15 yrs. Progress? Love the old enamel signs.
Kevin, if this is Brooklyn, Google Maps shows it gone.