BELIEVE me, I wouldn’t publish this photo of the depicted sign, at 7th Avenue and 1st Street in Pasrk Slope, if it hadn’t already been replaced. When I went by in 2017, it was still there; I checked on it periodically. In the 2010s, NYC’s Department of Transportation went on a final offensive on all nonstandard NYC street signs, expunging the remaining signs from past eras. Google Street View shows it hanging in there as late as 2020. Unfortunately, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Rancho Allegre, a block away at 7th and Garfield Place, has likewise been expunged. (Meanwhile, the DOT leaves most sunbleached signs in place.)
As you know by now if you have been a FNY fan, NYC street signs were formerly color coded by borough; Brooklyn was white on black, Queens blue on white, Bronx white on blue, and both Staten Island and Manhattan, black on yellow. In the 1980s the feds mandated that signage, except in historic and developmental districts, must be the same shade of green used on highway signs; so it was written and so it was done. In the 2010s the Feds further mandated that all new street signs had to be upper and lower case, instead of all caps.
Till recently you could see some stragglers in outlying areas; this one, in the heart of Park Slope, was simply overlooked in the 1980s during the first wave of replacements; maybe they ran out of 7th Avenue signs on the truck.
As is frequently the case… sick transit, Gloria!
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10/5/23
8 comments
I cant imagine the reason why the federal govt. is so concerned with what
a local govt. does with its street signs.
Maybe updating signs all the time cuts down on the number of traffic fatalities
I’m a bit confused about this federal requirement for green backgrounds on street signs. There are still quite a few municipalities that use other colors for the normal background of their street signs (both Cleveland, OH and San Antonio, TX use blue backgrounds)
I’ll try to find the documentation, but there are loopholes, since NYC has several areas with different color signs. Also, historic districts are marked by maroon signs.
Feds: “If you want Federal highway funds to help maintain roads, you have to tell the localities in your state to have white-on-green street signs!” Money doesn’t talk, it shouts!’
Exactly correct! It is simply “the power of the purse”.
There must be some flexibility in street signage. For example, I live on a corner; as I read this I look over my shoulder & I see that the sign on that corner is green, the letters are white but they are all upper case. Possible explanation: where I live, San Tan Valley, AZ, is unincorporated, but it’s part of Pinal Co. which has the same land area as Connecticut. Surely, the county receives its share of Federal aid & San Tan Valley, which has the highest population of any jurisdiction in the county receives its share but this is just a bit too esoteric for the rest of us to digest. It’s easier to just relax and be grateful for all the signage that wasn’t here when I arrived*
* This area didn’t even have its own name at that time (2005) so for lack of a name it was called Queen Creek which is the last jurisdiction in Maricopa Co. Eventually this led to a list of name possibilities & the winner was chosen by referendum.
The “white” on the Queens signs resembled more of a beige.
I still remember yellow on black at JFK Airport during the 1980’s.
What’s the name of the ones with jazz musicians, the Unisphere, and keyboards on them along Van Wyck Boulevard and the streets surrounding Jamaica LIRR/AirTrain station?