Mid-Brooklyn’s north-south avenues have a naming pattern from west to east. After Bedford and then Nostrand, they are named for major cities found going north on the Hudson River and…

Just outside the turnstiles in the concourse of the 14th Street station on the IND 8th Avenue line (A, C, E trains) there’s a handsomely lettered sign in the black…

A remaining street sign for Hamburg Avenue remains chiseled into a building at Harman Street in Bushwick, close to the Myrtle Avenue el. Bushwick in northeast Brooklyn used to be…

If I didn’t tell you where this sign is located, your natural assumption would be Manhattan, whose Broadway runs from the Battery to the Harlem River and beyond. Actually, I…

Here’s a classic plastic-letter storefront sign at a launderette at 4th Avenue and Bergen Street in Gowanus, just south of the classic Williamsburg Bank Tower, or One Hanson as it’s…

Various logos and graphic representations have been used for NYC transit companies over the years, but the handsomest has been the interlocking “TA” used by the New York City Transit…

Have I ever mentioned that I got a B in a college math class? It was a proud B, since it was one of a handful of A’s and B’s…

I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed this classic awning sign on 8th Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue in Dyker Heights, since I must have passed it every day on the…

Originally, NYC fire alarms, introduced in the 1880s, were indicated by lights mounted on shafts above the alarm itself. However, when cast and wrought iron streetlamps were introduced in 1892…

This nearly rusted-through sign on 73rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenues (my former block) was rusty when I moved there in 1982. There are plenty of these type of…

This battered sign for S&H Green Stamps hung outside Mishkin’s Pharmacy on West 145th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, along with old-school neon signs, for decades before a recent renovation. S&H,…

There are a pair of unusually-named streets on the southern edge of Far Rockaway: Seagirt Boulevard, the more important of the two, a 6-lane behemoth with a center divider that…