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.

Vintage subway signage at a Sixth Avenue station

The Sixth Avenue and 14th Street station opened in 1940—a busy, grimy, not particularly inspiring or attractive stop connecting the F and M to the L, 1, 2, and 3 trains.

But it does have terrific old-school mosaic signs that make you feel like you’re back in midcentury Manhattan.

Like this one, directing you toward the Independent Subway—today’s Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue lines.

Transferring to the BMT Lines—the initials stood for Brooklyn Manhattan Transit, the company that once oversaw the L (plus the J, M, N, Q, and R trains)—is easy with this helpful arrow.

Even better is this mosaic telling travelers how to get to the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, aka today’s PATH, which shares an entrance to the station. When was the last time you heard the PATH referred to as the H&M?