Before you could Google-map your location on your smart phone, and even before every corner of the city had accurate signs, these chiseled street names came in pretty handy, letting you know where you were.
Mostly you see them in tenement-heavy neighborhoods like the East Village, East Harlem, and the Lower East Side.
Brownstone and tenement Brooklyn have plenty too, like this faded old carving at Underhill Avenue and Bergen Street in Prospect Heights.
Not all cross street carvings are in neighborhoods once poor or working-class. One of the loveliest of all is at University Place and “Twelfth Street East,” done up Beaux-Arts style.
Tags: addresses carved into buildings, Beaux-Arts architecture New York City, Brooklyn tenement, Cross streets on tenements, Elizabeth and Grand Streets, Hester and Ludlow Streets, Lower East Side Street, New York tenement, University Place
October 27, 2011 at 4:21 am |
What existing street has had the most name changes, and what were they?
What street has never had it’s name changed? Or least changes?
Which street still has it’s oldest pavement (bricks/cobblestones?).
October 27, 2011 at 7:19 am |
This “buildings with street signs” series is one of my favorites. Somehow, they really evoke an earlier day, perhaps because they preserve an obsolete function.
–Road to Parnassus
December 14, 2011 at 10:46 am |
there’s one on the building at 349 broadway (corner of leonard & b’way).
this used to be gurney’s old daguerreotype establishment. i don’t think the building itself is the same as it was 160 years ago when he ran his business from there, but someone decided to retain the street directionals on the sides nevertheless.
if you’d like, i can forward a pic.
best,
tmc
August 9, 2012 at 3:05 am |
[...] old city neighborhoods still have these street name carvings, like the East Village, the Lower East Side, and this beauty in Tribeca. Like this:LikeBe the first to like [...]