Outdated subway signs that still point the way

There are regular subway signs, and then there are the ones that give clear directions—in these cases, using names no longer widely used.

The Port Authority Building, the Art Deco structure built in 1932 that stretches from 14th to 15th Streets on Eighth Avenue, must have been important; it scored its own sign in the station at that corner.

Google bought it in 2010, and it now serves as their famous New York City headquarters. I wonder what old-school Port Authority employees would think of the trick doors in the library and Lego play area.

Here’s a peek inside, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

I’d never heard of the B and D trains referred to as “concourse trains.”

But they made up a branch of the IND called the Concourse Line, opened in 1933 and running from 145th Street (where the photo was located) and 205th Street in the Bronx, under the Grand Concourse.

Penn Railroad sounds quaint, but it’s easy enough to decipher. I wonder how many tourists and new New Yorkers know what BMT and H&M mean—and no, it certainly has nothing to do with the store!

A vintage subway sign hangs on in the Village

It’s been more than a year since this old-school sign was uncovered after the removal of a newsstand in front of a subway entrance at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street (Gothamist scored the details in September 2011.)

Amazingly, the MTA hasn’t yet covered the slightly tattered but very charming sign. Could it be here to stay—a ghost from New York’s transit past reminding riders that the A, C, and E used to be part of the Independent Subway System, opened in 1932?

The IND ran as a separate network from the privately owned IRT and BMT lines for eight years, until all three lines merged into one enormous city-run system in 1940.

Ghostly subway signage at Chambers Street

Time stands still at the Chambers Street J and Z station.

This deteriorated stop on the BMT, under the Manhattan Municipal Building, is like a subterranean ghost town. Its platforms are mostly empty, and paint peels while water drips from the ceiling.

But there’s one upside to the terrible neglect: No one has bothered to paint over the old-school IRT Lexington Avenue signs on several beams.

Most of the signs—1960s or 1970s maybe?—are much more faded than this one. They once pointed the way to the busier, tidier Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 6 train station connected via a passageway.

A ghostly subway sign for St. Vincent’s Hospital

It’s still a shock to see the dark, empty buildings clustered around West 12th Street and Seventh Avenue, home to St. Vincent’s until 2010.

This old sign, near a 13th Street exit at the Seventh Avenue and 14th Street station, is pulling a much slower fade.

It goes all the way to when St. Vincent’s was merely a hospital, not a medical center . . . .

A left behind subway sign at 42nd Street

I’m not sure when this sign dates to—the 1970s? The 1960s? Whenever New Yorkers still referred to trains by their old transit company initials rather than the letter or number.

Anyway, it sure doesn’t match the current New York City Transit sign motif.

It’s positioned high, almost out of view, just inside the 42nd Street A C E station as you enter the station from the lower level of the Port Authority.