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.

A typical tour at the New York Sign Museum. (Photo from NYSignMuseum.org)

It’s an interesting space, with the museum spread out over two floors. The lower floor is where the museum coexists with Noble Signs, which can make things a bit cramped (as shown in the photo above), but the shop is also its own museum of sorts. There was a Noble employee working on a commercial project during our tour, which was pretty cool. There are also lots of Noble promotional graphics that fit right in with the vintage signs, demonstrating the shop’s connection to the old signage styles.

These graphics from the Noble Signs website show the shop’s devotion to old-school New York sign styles. (Screen shots from NobleSigns.com)

Naturally, I took a lot of photos. Instead of presenting a super-long scroll, I’ve gathered 45 pics into this video slideshow (all of the individual pics are also available in this Flickr set):

Great stuff, right? I love how handcrafted and playful it all feels — the brushstrokes, the little typographic flourishes, the happy jumble of letters, symbols, and colors. So good!

In addition to all the signs, the museum also has some vintage sign-related publications, which I enjoyed thumbing through.

This trade magazine still exists today (although, like so many trade mags, it’s now digital-only and no longer has a print edition). Oddly, there’s also a Seventh Day Adventist magazine with the same title, which leads to confusing results when searching for vintage copies on eBay.

Copies of this 1956 book are now high-priced collector’s items among typography geeks. There’s a good video review of the book here, and you can click through the author’s subsequent book, Letter Design in the Graphic Arts, here. The author, Mortimer Leach (styled all-lowercase on the book cover!), was so influential that there’s a typeface named for him.

I couldn’t find any other catalogs from this sign manufacturer, but here’s a similar vintage catalog from another company.

The tour lasted only an hour, but I could have spent the whole day. So many great details to appreciate! The museum is hoping to secure a larger space at some point in the future, which would be great (you can help bring that to fruition by making a donation), but it’s still an excellent place to visit in its current location. You can reserve a spot for one of the upcoming tour dates here.

Meanwhile, if you have 10 minutes, here’s a really good video report on the museum, from just a few weeks ago:

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So that was my birthday afternoon. Prior to that, in the morning, I watched the Severance season finale, and in the evening I had a big feast at a Portuguese restaurant with over a dozen friends. So from start to finish, it was a Very Good Day!

Fast-forward to yesterday: My friend Matt invited me to join him and two other friends for dinner at a Brooklyn pizzeria called Speedy Romeo. While I was there, I noticed that the restaurant’s interior design is very sign-centric:

These signs were along one wall of the restaurant.

This giant “S” was in the bathroom.

This “SR” was at the host’s station.

Sure enough, it turns out that Speedy Romeo is a Noble Signs client. A crazy coincidence that puts the perfect capper on this story.

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• Some states call it a “Driver’s License” while others call it a “Driver License.” Here’s a breakdown. (From reader OatmealParmesan)

• The world’s largest two-headed calf collection? Sure, why not. (From Jason Hillyer)

• Here’s a really nice article, with great little video clips, about an old-fashioned Massachusetts typewriter-repair shop that’s closing after many decades of service.

• Some very clever and entertaining street artwork here and here. (From Rob Walker)

• Faaaascinating article on how to design dials and other interfaces for car interiors. (From Jeffrey Bramhall)

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.