When Queens Street Signs Were White

Most of Brownstoner Queens readers wouldn’t recall a time when New York street signs were coded by color. Beginning in the 1950s, when street signs were made of porcelain and metal, Manhattan and Staten Island received gold signs with black letters, while the Bronx received blue with white letters, Queens got white with blue letters, and Brooklyn got black signs with white letters.

When vinyl signs with metal brackets were introduced in 1964 and quickly spread around town, the old color-coded system was retained. If you weren’t completely sure what borough you were in, you could always glance at a street sign and be tipped off right away.

The federal government got involved with this scheme in the early 1980s, mandating green signs with white letters that supposedly, were easier to read. Rather quickly, the multicolored signs vanished and all street signs became green, with some neighborhoods such as the Financial District and Midtown exempt from the rule.

Here and there, though, the Department of Transportation neglected to replace the old color signs, and they stubbornly remain in place. That’s the case in Hollis Hills, where, the last time I looked, there were a pair of white and blue signs at Union Turnpike and 234th Street. I’m likely condemning them to death by featuring them here…

Kevin Walsh’s website is Forgotten New York. His book of the same name is also available.