In the early days of the 20th Century, NYC street signs became somewhat more standardized. Blue and white signs like the one on the left held sway on Manhattan street corners from the teens through the mid-sixties. Similar 'humpbacked' street signs dominated in the Bronx and Brooklyn as well. The sign at left was hung at the corner of Bridge and Whitehall in lower Manhattan for many years. I bought it in an anitique shop. Many of these signs were manufactured by the Marbelite and Municipal Sign Companies.

This Bridge Street sign, from Bridge and Johnson Streets in Brooklyn, was found by Forgotten Fan Angela; it was washed up on the Manhattan side!

Collector Lawrence Rogak has a group of mid-Manhattan signs in his Long Island office. These signs appeared in midtown Manhattan in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and survived till the dawn of the vinyl era in the early 1960s.

It's very difficult to find one of the old 'humpback' signs in place these days, but I've done that in downtown Brooklyn. The sign at right used to hang at the corner of Willoughby Street and Hudson Avenue, but it was left in mid-block when that section of Hudson Avenue was eliminated to make room for the University Towers housing project. The brackets on the bottom used to hold a one-way sign.

A close look at the 'hump' will reveal the faint words "Hudson Ave." proving that Hudson Avenue did indeed run here.

To complete the scene...the old Brooklyn Fifth Avenue El ran on this portion of Hudson Avenue on its way to the Brooklyn Bridge!

Yikes! The geniuses at the Department of Transportation have cobbled together a new "neo-hump' design using regulation green and white signs, on Malcolm X Blvd. It just ain't the same.

Photos by Donald Gilligan

Allen Place, in the Eastchester section of the Bronx, is a dead end street on De Lavall Avenue just south of Boston Road. It doesn't show up on most maps of the area, and obviously the Department Of Transportation doesn't know it exists either, since this 1910s-vintage blue sign is still on a telephone pole there. Note the similarity to the Whitehall-Bridge Street sign at the top of this page. Before 1914, Manhattan and The Bronx were a single borough and shared street sign design (blue with white lettering). Hey, if you don't tell the DOT, I won't! 2003: Too late, somebody told the DOT...was it you?

The last generation of Queens street signs prior to the 1964 conversion to large vinyl signs has a survivor on Nassau Blvd. where it meets the LIE. Nassau Blvd. used to run from Queens Boulevard into Nassau County, but it was later renamed Horace Harding Blvd. and in the 1960s, made into a full fledged expressway, the LIE.

For many years, Staten Island had its own distinctive style of street signage: small yellow signs with the name of the street in black. The signs would either be mounted on short poles, as on the left, or mounted on a utility pole.

Although such signs are now nearly extinct, two have been preserved on the grounds of the historic Richmondtown Restoration. The picture above is from January 1998 and shows the corner of Arthur Kill Road and Center Street. The nearly 300-year-old Treasure House is shown in the background.

A nearby sign at Richmond Road and Court Place

A second look at the Arthur Kill/Centre Street sign.

Photo: Doug Douglass

In Tottenville, another ancient street sign has survived on Bedell Avenue and Jacob Street.

These signs most likely date to the 1920s. When they were installed, Tottenville was countryside with a few main routes and even fewer side streets, of which Jacons Street was one. In the decades since, Jacobs Street has lost an 's' and is now known as Jacob Street.

Some new signs have begun to break the mold. As the trend for throwback cast-iron lamppost designs continues unabated, street signs have gotten into the act, imitating the humpback signs of old.

The sign at left is on Park Avenue and East 64th Street. It is one in a series of new signs being installed in the area. Its raised letters are reflective to match the present day safety concerns, while its retro styling complements the cast iron "bishops crook" perfectly.