75TH AVENUE SUBWAY SIGNAGE

I recently walked from Briarwood to Forest Hills, mostly along Austin Street, a walk I hope to complete along its northern section soon. I have also published a couple pieces about Briarwood by other writers and intend to spend more time there soon; though if all goes well I will begin a work assignment in July and will have less time to devote to stalking around with the camera, at least during the week. We will see. On that aforementioned trip I decided to call it an afternoon and catch a Queens Blvd express at 75th Avenue. Right off the bat, I noticed that its old station ID signs on the center columns between tracks were still there.

 I’m fascinated by the square signs that were employed on subway columns. Most of these, before the 1980s, were white enamel signs with black lettering in a font designed specifically for the Transit Authority (I have not seen it elsewhere).

Most of these signs were replaced by black signs with white lettering, first in the Standard font, then in Helvetica. The most prominent feature of these signs was that speace considerations required abbreviation, sometimes with apostrophes or hyphens, sometimes not.

Many of these signs were made by the Baltimore Enamel and Novelty Company, in business from 1898 to 1943, which produced products like municipal signs and license plates. Occasionally signs like these pop up for sale online. I do not know if the company produced Manhattan’s distinctive navy and white humpback street signs.

The last enamel signs of this type in service were on the BMT Times Square station which remained in place into the 1990s. In some stations, you’ll find them in columns located between uptown and downtown tracks, such as at the West 4th Street IND station. They’re pretty dust and crud-encased by now, though.

I also noticed the now 90+ year old tiled signage that is emblematic of Independent Subway stations built mostly in the 1930s. Many readers are now in the dark about the era when three separate companies ran NYC subways until 1940: Interborough Rapid Transit, founded in 1904, now consists of the numbered lines; Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, initiated as part of the “Dual Contracts” founded to build subway and elevated lines in Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens in 1911; and the Independent Subway, founded in 1925 by New York City itself mainly to compete with the elevated lines (and succeeded in outcompeting many of them). The three “branches” were unified under one aegis in 1940, though it took some years for them to knit together and permit free transfers. To this day, because of track width differences, differing car widths, Interborough trains can’t run on BMT or IND trackage.

Subway station designer Squire Vickers, taking note of the Art Deco and Moderne art trends that largely eschewed ornamentation, devised the signage seen here for IND lines, and the signs are so timeless most of the originals remain in place today. The lettering is the same, but the tile colors change: all local statins between express stations are the same color, which changes at the next express stop. The reason for this is unclear but the best story I have heard is that the colors change to accommodate: 1) people hard of hearing, so they know what general area they are in, and B) non-English readers, for the same reason. In any case, the changing colors of the station tiles make the IND (or what we once called the IND) visually interesting.

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6/9/26