Where can I find pics of vintage subway signs?

[ghankerson]

Does anybody know where I can find pictures of old NY subway signs, as well as other states and countries? I love looking at them. I build industrial furniture and decided to try reproducing some of the cool signs you see or used to see in NYC. Here the first one I made this week:

 

 

I'd love to get some feedback on it. It is based on an old sign I saw in a picture a while back. Built it all out of steel and rivets.

[jrriv]

I love this sign and would like to become a reseller. Contact me if you're interested. JR@Subwaysigns.com

[Joe]

I've seen that actual sign recently...

[Y2Julio]

Looks pretty cool.

[ghankerson]

Thanks! I think I'll have to make a back lit one next.

[Melvin]

Does anybody know where I can find pictures of old NY subway signs, as well as other states and countries? I love looking at them. I build industrial furniture and decided to try reproducing some of the cool signs you see or used to see in NYC. Here the first one I made this week:

 

I'd love to get some feedback on it. It is based on an old sign I saw in a picture a while back. Built it all out of steel and rivets.

 

http://www.nycsubway.org/lines/

 

The typeface looks too modern but otherwise it looks pretty good.

[ghankerson]

Ya I tried to get the font as close to this original as possible:

 

[Y2Julio]

Not bad for going by eye though.

[underbankbldg]

Pre-ugly gray slate on the Fourth Avenue Line, especially Union Street, pics are the pics I'd love to see. To this day most people have no idea what the color scheme at Union Street was other than gray and ugly, what looks like housing project, gray.

 

Also miss the 1970s (or that is what it was when I first starting taking NYC subway trains) black on white, even though I understand why the change was done.

[bigrene18]

Speaking of old vintage subway signs, there was a few stations that had them well in to the 1990s, and into the 1980's as well:

 

18 years ago or so (around 1992) I have seen them at the Roosevelt Avenue Station the Queens Blvd Line (and those were nice big ones).

 

At the Canal Street station on the BMT Nassau/Centre Street Subway, about 25 years ago I photographed a sign above the stairs coming down from the street that said "To Chambers St". Obviously a reference to the Centre St. subway's terminus, pre-Nassau Street subway extension in 1931.

 

The BMT Broadway's Times Square-42nd Street still had them until 2004, when renovation of the station took place.

 

The 4th Avenue station on the & had the old original 1930's black and white signs until the mid-1990s.

 

The Lefferts Blvd station on the still had the original white-on-blue signs on the platform as late as 1993. (I was amazed that they were still there 17 years ago)

 

Until the mid 1990s, there was an original "DOWNTOWN EXPRESS TRAINS" sign near the southern end of the southbound platform at Times Square - 42nd Street on the IRT 7th Avenue line, complete with arrow pointing to the express track.

 

There are (or were, until recently) similarly old no-spitting signs in some IND stations. (In Brooklyn, maybe? Broadway-ENY?)

 

As late as 2001, at the BMT 59th Street/4th Avenue station in Brooklyn, there was an 60's/70's style black-on-white station sign at the far north end of the northbound platform.

 

Many Queens Blvd Line stations have the old signs on the columns between the tracks:

PARSONS

SUTPHIN

VAN WYCK

UNION T'P'KE

75TH AVE.

CONTI- NENTAL AVE./FOREST HILLS

67TH AVE.

63RD DRIVE

GRAND AVE.

 

Also at the 179th Street station, at the south end of the northbound platform, there are pillars that have the original sign plate.

 

The Grand Central-42nd Street station on the IRT Lex Ave. Subway still had the old signs in the early 1990s.

 

There were signs that read: "CHANGE AT HOYT STREET FOR TRAINS TO CHURCH AVE AND QUEENS". These signs were all over the IND Fulton St Subway until the late 1980's or so. There was one at the extreme front ends of the Manhattan-bound platforms at Broadway-ENY (B'way Junction) and Rockaway Avenue.