This torn, faded anti-littering poster is still adhered to a beam between the F and G tracks at the Seventh Avenue station in Park Slope.
“Litter Is a Hazard Here” it reads, an arrow pointing to the tracks. Apparently, riders decades ago were just as likely to toss trash on the tracks as riders are today.
The sign is part of a series of “Subway Sun” messages first launched by the IRT in the teens, according to this Princeton University Library blog, which also provides a little backstory and images of other Subway Sun posters.
So how old is the Park Slope sign? I’m guessing it dates to the 1940s, and it just might be older than these vintage signs found in another Brooklyn F station that warn riders not to spit or lean over toward the tracks.
Tags: don't litter signs, F train, New York City Subway, old signs in the subway, The Subway Sun, Vintage subway signs
April 27, 2011 at 2:04 am |
See the little Chiclets gum vending machine on the dark, bolted metal column, in the upper part of the picture? I remember the open-topped metal box affixed below the machine, which was for the purpose of receiving the waste – presumably the little cardboard boxes that were dispensed from the machine, each holding two Chiclets.
April 27, 2011 at 2:09 am |
Ah, very good eye!
April 27, 2011 at 2:28 am |
P.S. The vending machines were attached to those subway platforms around the turn of the last century, to sell gum. I’m not sure when the tiny boxes containing two candy-coated pieces of Chiclets gum (for two cents a box) were stocked in those vending machines. I want to say they were there in the 1940s but I’m not absolutely certain of that. Definitely they were there in the 1950s and into the 1960s. They were at least in the process of disuse and removal in the 1970s.
April 27, 2011 at 2:40 am |
this sign was fully intact just a few years ago. the damage there looks very recent.
April 27, 2011 at 3:40 am |
About a year ago, in London, renovations uncovered a great cache of 1950′s posters. Perhaps there’s similar time-capsule somewhere beneath New York, just waiting to be unearthed!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1286535/Notting-Hill-posters-1950s-artwork-Tube-station.html
April 27, 2011 at 5:07 pm |
These are super cool. There must be a similar stash in one of the abandoned subway stations here in NYC, somewhere….
April 27, 2011 at 4:16 am |
Obscured by time is the third part of the sign, at upper left, which reads on the trash can, “throw paper here”.
April 27, 2011 at 6:03 am |
i have a shot of one like it but less chipping, on the A,C,E line
April 27, 2011 at 10:07 pm |
There are 2 Subway Sun signs still intact but dirty on the A/C line in Brooklyn at the Kingston-Throop stop on the Manhattan bound side.
April 27, 2011 at 10:08 pm |
[...] Columbia’s Manhattanville foundation work will take until fall 2013 [Harlem Bespoke] · What the oldest sign in an NYC subway station looks like [ENY] · Tickets now being handed out for biking outside bike lanes [Runnin' Scared] · [...]
April 28, 2011 at 2:37 am |
The sinister potential of the vending machines is realized in Paul Bowles’s short story, “If I Should Open My Mouth”.
April 28, 2011 at 8:58 am |
I well remember those hand-drawn signs, with their characteristic, steel pen lettering, in subway stations. They were all signed “Oppy,” as I recall. (The artist was said to be a woman named Oppenheimer, if memory serves correctly.) Probably collector’s items, now.
June 22, 2011 at 4:04 am |
I remember buying Chicklets from those dispensers in the 70s.
November 4, 2011 at 6:27 pm |
theres a more worn version of this same sign on the toward Manhattan side of the F station at Ft Hamilton Parkway, 2 stops after the 7th Ave station referenced above.