THE OLD ONE WAY

Today’s post unites the neighborhods of Far Rockaway, Queens, and Bushwick, Brooklyn, where you will find a pair of the oldest variety of one-way signs remaining in New York City. They are there by pure neglect on the part of the Department of Transportation, of course.

 

NYC’s original one-way signs were white arrow-shaped signs with “One-Way” spelled out in black. (Some old ones said “Police Dept” on them, as well.) They were replaced by the current flock of rectangular black signs in the 1970s after a midterm interregnum of white signs with black ‘arrowheads.’ Because of the city’s relentlessly thorough sign-replacement policy, an original one-way sign from the 1910s or 20s is rare indeed. But here it is, in one of NYC’s remotest outposts at the L-turn formed by Bolton Road and Virginia Street. Sharp-eyed observers will note upside-down type on the sign; it has been turned upside down over the years, and now points to a house instead of the actual direction traffic should go (see the newer sign adjacent to it).

 

A second leftover one-way sign can be found on an elevated train pillar at Broadway and DeSales Place, near Broadway Junction in Bushwick. Odd things, as we’ve seen, can sometimes be found lurking beneath els. THis one has not been so much neglected as totally ignored; when the painters did the el, they simply painted over the sign in the same shade of green.

Have I doomed these signs?

4/29/14