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On this page, our view of unusual and forgotten NYC signs will take us to a 19th-Century British novel, as well as to a long-gone Brooklyn bus route.

Someone in the NYC Parks Department, most likely Henry Stern, has been reading Samuel Butler. Butler, a 19th-Century British novelist, wrote the allegorical Erewhon in 1872. Very much in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels, it told the story of an upside-down country near New Zealand in which it is a punishable offense to become ill, yet where criminality and immorality are looked upon as treatable diseases (sound familiar in the USA of the early 21st Century?) This traffic island is at Utopia Parkway and 188th Street.

Before the now-familiar boxy bus routes and schedules that surround their metal poles were introduced, small, porcelain bus route maps were the rule, constructed mostly in the 1960s. The one at right, at Woodpoint Road and Skillman Avenue in Williamsburg, marks a bus stop that hasn't been there in years: the 24, which runs from Greenpoint to Woodside and back to Williamsburg, now travels down Kingsland Avenue. There is no longer a 29. Note Woodpoint Road's former name on the map: Old Woodpoint Road. Similarly, this well worn sign for the #34 route can be found on 86th Street in Bensonhurst. The 34 hasn't run on this route for quite some time; the #1 took it over long ago. Old school bus stop sign at Lefferts Blvd. and Talbot St., Forest Hills LEFT: The old B64 route sign is now also incorrect; the route no longer goes along 28th and Cropsey Avenues.

As a rule, old-fashioned white expressway signs have been replaced by wide green and white ones. But, these two, that mark the entrance to the BQE at Atlantic Avenue and Columbia Street, are still there, still illuminated by their incandescent bulbs at night. Note the old-fashioned bent arm lamppost mast in the background, at left. 4/2000 update: The DOT has retired these signs.

Here's an ancient arrowhead sign on the Dyre Avenue trestle over 233rd Street in the Bronx. It dates from the very early days of the New England Thruway.

Here's a moldy oldie pointing the way to the ferry from Tompkins Circle in Stapleton, Staten Island, which is on a high hill.

This ancient street sanitation sign was found in Steinway Village in Astoria.

This is the 'mark' of an old German shooting club on St. Mark's Place, hence the target motif. It was built in 1885 or so.

Ridgewood and Kew Gardens' brownstones still have ancient enamel signs like these. Salads and candy in Laurel Hill, Queens.

Ancient directional sign on "Tunnel Entrance" Street leading to the Queens Midtwon Tunnel. This one may go back to when the tunnel was built in the 1930s. Typical 'Slow Children' sign on 70th and 70th in Glendale, but this one must have been imported from Nassau County; the Town of Hempstead hasn't been in Queens since 1898. That's gotta hurt!

At one time before standard bus schedules and signs were installed at Staten Island bus stops, all of them were marked by these low-tech, yellow with black-stenciled lettered bus stop signs like this one on Willowbrook Road. Ancient Caution Children sign on 73rd Street near 7th Avenue in Bay Ridge. HOME | LAMPS | SUBWAYS & TRAINS | ADS | TROLLEYS | SIGNS | COBBLESTONES | STREET SCENES | YOU'D NEVER BELIEVE YOU'RE IN NYC | LINKS | ALLEYS | NECROLOGY | CEMETERIES E-mail me at erpietri@earthlink.net. Thanks for visiting the site!