What Happened To Those Old Street Signs?
From the Look Magazine photo archive comes this photograph taken by Philip Harrington in 1962 showing the street signs at the intersection of Nassau and Pine Streets.
The humpback street signs which had served New York City for about 50 years were discontinued over the next few years and replaced by rectangular yellow signs with black letters. Those signs lasted until the early 1980’s when they were taken down.
The old elegant blue street signs with white serif lettering ended up being bought en masse by Stamford House Wrecking in Stamford, CTÂ in the 1970’s and were sold to the public for $5 to $8 apiece. In 1972 there were literally thousands of the signs stacked against each other outside their warehouse in numerical street order. It was in this way I was able to purchase the old sign for the street I lived on in the Bronx for $5. Unfortunately during many moves it somehow got misplaced.
The street signs now command $150 apiece and more on eBay.
This explains why so many are available today. I bought Washington Sq N at MacDougal on ebay about 20 years ago for a couple hundred bucks. I watched it’s mate – MacDougal at Wash Sq N – sell for $2300 in 2017.
I, too, bought one of those terrific signs from Stamford House Wrecking. Loved it, but also lost track of it over the years.