A Visit to the New York Sign Museum

I could have spent the whole day there. Plus a new Inconspicuous News Roundup!

Noble Signs co-president Mac Pohanka speaking during last Friday’s tour of the New York Sign Museum.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m fascinated by signs, so it’s no surprise that I’ve visited America’s two major sign museums: the Neon Museum in Las Vegas and the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati (which I visited in 2017 and 2018, respectively).

But there’s a new addition to the world of sign museums, and it’s right here in Brooklyn: the New York Sign Museum, which, as its name suggests, is devoted to preserving the history and style of signage in New York City.

Signs are large objects that are designed to attract attention from a distance, so a sign museum should ideally have a big, dedicated space. The Vegas and Cincinnati facilities both fit that description, but the New York Sign Museum is much smaller, at least for now. It shares space with a working sign shop, Noble Signs, which is devoted to old-school sign-making techniques. That’s how the museum got started — Noble Signs’ founders began rescuing old signs that were being trashed as various shops went out of business. As Noble started to become known for its vernacular graphic approach, people began alerting the staff when old signs became available.

The Noble Signs shop, which also houses the New York Sign Museum, located in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. Note the Lillian Dress Co. sign above the front door, from the building’s original occupant.

But because Noble is a working trade shop, it has only so much room for vintage signs. As a result, the museum’s current collection is somewhat modest — about 50 large-scale storefront signs and a few hundred smaller items.

The museum shares space with the Noble Signs workshop. (Photo from Eventbrite)

The museum was officially established in 2019 but could be visited only by appointment. As a reporter and sign enthusiast, I really should have arranged a visit, but somehow I never got around to it. (The pandemic didn’t help.) Then, late last year, the museum began offering group tours every couple of weeks. I noticed that one of the tours was on the afternoon of my birthday, which seemed perfect, so I signed up and took the tour last Friday.