The City and The Street Sign

Manhattan in the late 19th century was a bustling metropolis. (But obviously of a very different sort than we are used to seeing.) With the introduction of electricity and motorized transportation, the city was rapidly changing. Yet one thing slow to change was the street name sign. It is almost impossible to imagine any city without street signs. However, there were approximately 10,000 streets and intersections without signage in Manhattan at the turn of the 19th century. Visitors were not the only ones who found it difficult to navigate the city, lifelong citizens were becoming similarly flustered, frustrated and confused with both the lack of signage and the decaying or misnaming of existing signs. The street sign issue remained a catalyst for extreme debate and contemplation between 1899-1902, as the citizens of Manhattan demanded better signs to make navigating the city space easier, safer and more efficient. And even after the turn of the century, the demand for signage improvement was once again revisited throughout the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's.

As stated above, it is hard to imagine a city so severely lacking in street name signs; it is even more difficult to visually represent that omission. The streets and avenues plotted on this map attempt to give a strong overview of what those existing street signs looked like, and how they changed visually over time. I chose four streets and avenues that seem to be the most appropriate representations of all the aspects applicable to this study of Manhattan's street name signs, growth, decay, navigability: 23rd Street, Lexington Avenue, Broadway and Madison Ave.

Embarking on this project, I thought that the signs would somehow be visually understood apart from the city, that they embodied meaning apart from the city itself. Upon completing this map, I understand the fallacy of this assumption. The signs are in fact less meaningful when taken out of the context of the city they are helping define. I have tried to include the city with the image of the sign whenever possible to underscore their symbiosis.

The Site

Although it is not an immediate connection, the street name sign is perfect for the digital map. The street name sign is about navigability, precisely the same goal, experience and experiment of the digital map. The similarities between the street name sign and the digital map become even more clear when trying to put them together in an organized, coherent and effective way. The map needs to clearly explain to the user where to go, in what order and why. The street name sign's purpose is to be the marker telling the user where to go, and they are ordered towards that end in Manhattan, thanks to the grid.

In using this map, it is imperative that all related resources are accessed. It is not enough to click on the bright red lines. It is necessary to follow the trail of information, archives and images in order to understand the fullness of how the street signs were, how and why they changed and the impact they had on the citizens of the city.

When I began thinking about this map, I thought, in its final analysis, it had the potential to be the last word on street name signs in Manhattan. That it's not; but it is undoubtedly the first word on a previously unwritten topic.