By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent On my way, going southbound on the Grand Concourse, I got caught by a red light at E. 188th Street.  While waiting for it…

A sharp-eyed Gary Fonville found an old 7-Up sign, as well as the word “Midget,” in back of a newer vinyl awning on East Tremont Avenue in Westchester Square recently.…

In the 1940s or 1950s, the Department of Traffic (now Transportation) installed hundreds of “arrowhead” signs all over town, pointing to bridges and tunnels. They took the shape of arrowheads,…

The Department of Transportation recently bagged another pair of ancient street signs in Brooklyn recently, as on today’s Fort Greene foray I found the pair shown here had finally been…

For over 18 years (as I write this in 2017) I have written about NYC’s infrastructure, as well as other hidden aspects like ancient ads, signage, and things people rarely…

At some point in the Easy Eighties, the Department of Transportation did a little experiment with the pillars for the Jamaica El on Jamaica Avenue, placing square street signs on…

One of the most perplexing situations as far as New York City streets and their names is concerned exists in Douglaston and Little Neck, where a curving road runs across…

I haven’t had the chance to nip down to Tottenville to see the newest station on the Staten Island Railway, Arthur Kill, which was built between the former Atlantic and…

On a recent outing I ran across this abandoned luncheonette, complete with green and gold “privilege” sign, on Tuskegee Airmen Way off 150th Street. The yellow tin letters on green background…

In 1999, waiting for a train at the Smith-9th Street elevated IND station, I snapped a photo of the massive Kentile Floors neon sign, built to attract business from the…

Though most color-coded NYC street signs were removed in the 1980s after a run of only about twenty years, a group of them on Jamaica Avenue between Sutphin Boulevard and…

Before about 2000 or so, there was an object that closely resembled a tombstone, at least from the back, at Ocean Parkway and Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. That year…