About 10 or 15 years ago, I was at a garage sale, and I found these large manila envelopes containing magazine and newspaper clippings related to antique cars . . .
There must be over 100 articles, apparently collected by an old car enthusiast who was active in the mid-1950s. His area of interest spanned from the earliest cars c. 1900 to the classics of the ’30s, but there were lots of general automotive articles from the time as well. He must have lived in or near Detroit, Michigan because many of the articles are from the Detroit Free Press. So I picked out this one article which hasn’t seen the light of day in over 60 years and decided to share it with you.
The article entitled “There’s a Cycle In Street-Sign Fashions, Too” is from the April 24, 1955 edition of the Detroit Free Press Roto Magazine. It reports that the city of Detroit is currently replacing all its old stop signs with modern ones of uniform design. The first stop signs were put up beginning in 1923 (some sources say the first one was from 1915), and they were of various shapes and colors. Interestingly enough, it was not the city or state government that created and installed the early signs, but the American Automobile Association (a private entity)! Starting in 1906, regional AAA clubs began paying for and installing wooden signs to help motorists find their way. The AAA apparently did this out of goodwill and to assist fellow motorists. To me, this raises questions about jurisdiction and enforcement–does a municipal police officer have the right to give you a ticket for failing to obey a sign on a public street that was put up by a private organization? I’m assuming that there must have been some collaboration with local governmental authorities.
Ahh, the good old days! Imagine–you could join the AAA, design some road signs the way you want them, go out and put them up wherever you think they should be along the roadside, and AAA covers the expenses. And everybody will follow or obey your sign. Was it really that simple? (Source: YourAAA Daily)
W. B. Bachman, membership director of the Automobile Club of Detroit. He designed and supervised the posting of the first 12,000 stop signs in Detroit and Michigan in 1923.
One of the earliest stop signs.
Same intersection in 1955, showing one of the new red octagon signs which are so familiar today. This design has lasted 66 years without change.
Ledyard and Second today. The stop sign remains, but most previously existing buildings are gone. The city streets, once bustling with traffic, are strangely deserted. (Source: Google Street Views)
One block down, at Ledyard and Third. This stop sign was yellow and black, and was about to be replaced.
Ledyard and Third today. Victorian house in the background is gone, as are most of the buildings in downtown Detroit that would have existed in the mid-20th century. (Source: Google Street Views)
More lost Detroit Victorians. The beauty of some streets rivaled those of famous European capitals. All have been destroyed.
Such morbid signs–one shaped like a coffin; the other warns of killing children. Did the famous octagon shape evolve from a coffin?
Here’s a sign near me–this weathered artifact is still in service. I would guess it’s earlier than 1950.
Continuing the AAA tradition of making your own street signs, this homemade sign for Sycamore Lane has been in service for several decades with no municipal replacement.
Someone made his own speed limit sign–5 MPH. I’m sure it’s strictly enforced.
In the 1970s, maybe into the 1980s, there was a program where certain parents and other “nice” adults would volunteer to have a “red hand” sign placed in a front window of their house. Children at school were told that if they were ever in trouble to go to houses with the red hand visible, and there they would receive help. As far as I know, this program was eventually abandoned and forgotten. The children originally “protected” are now in their 40s and 50s, but this road sign remains. Does anyone else remember this?
So thanks to an anonymous Free Press reporter and an unknown car enthusiast who liked to save newspaper articles, this story gains new life. Which just shows how the small, seemingly ephemeral works we create today can reverberate decades, perhaps even centuries in the future. I think it’s interesting that so many road sign forms (STOP, ONE WAY, etc.) that were conceived 60 or more years ago have continued unchanged. That’s a pretty long run for any designed product.
QOTD: Do you know of any sign(s) that are long out-of-date yet are still in use? Any homemade ones?
You scored quite the treasure trove of information.
Here’s a brief summary of the history of standardization of road signs and it makes mention of the octagonal stop signs. It took a while (although there are some mild deviations in some locales) but the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is now the standard for road signs and why signs generally look the same all over the US.
https://mutcd.info/history-of-the-mutcd/
There have been some subtle changes over the last thirty or so years. Stop signs used to come in three sizes – 30″, 36″, and 48″. Many entities have ceased using the 30″ signs.
Reflectivity and font size have also been the focus for a while, primarily due to the aging of our population. Most sign sheeting currently contains glass beads for reflectivity. Improper handling can produce crushed beads; I’ve seen footprints in signs along the highway as the beads had been destroyed prior to installation.
Sign blanks are often aluminum for longer life.
There are a few stop signs in my area that have flashing red LEDs on them to grab extra attention. They’ve only been here a year or two.
Oh, heavens, no, not for many decades. That’s ASTM Type I, II, and III sheeting. Most types of sheeting in current use are based on microprisms/corner cubes, not glass beads.
This document (pdf) is a good quick guide to retroreflective sheeting types.
You know, I did actually know that. I got myself confused with striping of roads and the current short supply of, drum roll, the glass beads used with the paint. I do know more about all of this than I let on. There has never been any real mention of what I do for a day job….
What do you do for a day job?
It’s a combination cheerleader, disciplinarian, coach, and mentor. Best job I’ve ever had.
That said some of my past pieces do give some heavy-handed hints.
Oldest functioning signal light in New Jersey:
(Maple St. & Union Pl., Summit NJ)
Back in the ’50s many signs were formed with glass reflective beads. The word STOP was made of beads. Street names were ‘beaded’ in concrete obelisks, or ‘beaded’ into the curb at the corner. I’ll bet some of those are still around in small towns that haven’t been gentrified or urban-renewed.
Weird – I just pulled a Google Maps image this morning of that same intersection and it looks altogether different from yours! (I checked the street sign and unless there’s another 2nd and Ledyard, this is it). Not a soul around. Looks like the big old building in the middle is gone and the other is either in some state of renovation or demolition. Other buildings in your pic are gone too. Shame about the lost Victorians but they’re better gone than falling down and creating a public health hazard. All the original owners are resting in the eternal sleep, but their descendants are living it up in Grosse Pointe!
There are two Ledyard & Seconds–Second Avenue “jogs” at Cass Park.
Here’s another before and after shot–amazing what used to be there!
So were most of those old Victorian houses torn down recently as part of that plan to rid Detroit of vacant houses, or years earlier for other reasons? It’s rare in my parts for big houses to be torn down with nothing replacing them (but common if a developer buys out a block or two where they want to tear everything down and put up larger structures).
If it’s like most other US cities in the 20th century, busing, white flight, slumlords moved in, no maintenance on the houses until they were uninhabitable, then abandonment. Then came “urban renewal,” razing of neighborhoods, lather, rinse, repeat.
Long read but this explains all of the events that lead to the fall of Detroit really well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit
Economic base left for the suburbs, the South, and foreign countries.
Old AAA sign, still in place in Alexandria, VA
https://jay.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341caff553ef0134852ade97970c-pi
Neat! This sign is relatively close to where I live, and I used to work about a mile away from there, but I’ve never seen it.
It’s located near the intersection of two minor streets, so I wonder if it’s in its original location. Also, it appears to be two-sided, and parallel to the road… one side faces the sidewalk, so I guess if a pedestrian decides to spontaneously walk 70 miles to Winchester, he knows in which direction to go.
That is an interesting question about early traffic signs and municipal authority. I suspect that cities had to authorize them at certain intersections in order to make them mandatory and enforceable. Otherwise, such a sign would have no legal effect, other than a reminder of a driver’s general duty to be careful and follow any other laws.
I loved the one that reminds us to not kill children. There were days when my own kids were younger when such a sign would have been a good reminder. 🙂
The devices that always fascinated me were the old traffic signals that predated traffic lights, and had the motorized arms for “stop” and “go” that would raise and lower. Those are seen in a lot of movies from the first half of the 30s – it would be hard to imagine a more expensive and maintenance-intensive traffic control device.
Perhaps those “stop” and “go” arms were emulating the similar semaphores used on the railroads.
I remember being surprised in Italy to see red, octagonal STOP signs and reading that they meant YIELD. In Ecuador, similar red octagonal signs that read ALTO. Having just returned from a 6500 mile road trip through 14 states the lack of standardization of some signage in the US is still noticeable, compared to Europe, for example. ‘Dead End”, “No Exit”; “OK to Drive in Breakdown Lane”, “OK to Drive on Shoulder”; “Road Work Ahead”, “Men Working Ahead”; etc. and why is it safe to drive 80 mph on an Interstate in Montana, and slow to 65 for construction (“Traffic Fines Doubled”) while in California we can only go 70 and have to slow to 55?
Federalism. I see the difference in signage and pavement markings for off-ramps and merges for highways, especially state highways more than the Interstates. When traveling to different states, I need to figure out what things mean, and not assume it is the same as back home.
Different formats for wayfinding signs. Most states now have “custom” state highway markers and depending on when they were adopted, a dwindling number of MUTCD default black-and-white roundel ones.
Vermont has no county roads so no blue-and-gold pentagonal county route markers, and town-limit signs are white on green and tell you the name and distance to the next town (or occasionally the nearest Interstate entrance). Massachusetts town-limit signs are black-on-white with an open-book effect border graphic and tell you the date of the town’s founding.
Great collection of sign history!
Regarding the practice of painting bands on telephone poles to mark certain roadways, I believe that practice was conceived (possibly by the AAA) after Henry Ford got lost on a trip from Detroit to either Indianapolis or Chicago. Colored bands were painted on poles along several routes away from Detroit afterwards – I’m not sure how long the practice endured.
Fascinating article, especially in the context of the urban decay of Detroit. Very unfortunate. I believe that city is not alone in the rust belt in its apparent degradation. I’ve driven through (an admittedly) bad section of Gary IN, and that was shocking to say the least in its boarded up windows and storefronts, and destroyed or collapsed homes.
Now that street signage is mostly standardized, one can make their way across almost any area of North America and rely on the signage. Horizontal traffic lights in some areas may be the exception.
Since different countries are on metric, and some the imperial systems, some would be well advised to post what measurement system is in effect for speed limits- MPH or KM/H.
Thought provoking.
In the town of Canton, Mass. there is the oldest street sign that I know of. It is on Washington St. in front of St. Mary’s Cemetary. It sits right at the curb looking like a headstone that was placed outside of the cemetary wall. The fact is, it predates the cemetary. As I mentioned it is a stone mile marker carved to read
B
15
M
That’s it. It’s been there since colonial times though no one is sure of an exact date. To a largely illiterate, or semi literate population it was expected that travelers would be able to figure out that the sign stood for “Boston 15 miles”. There are other markers like this around New England, the Boston area in particular.
Detroit still has plenty of Victorian houses to view in many beautiful city neighborhoods. True, a lot were destroyed due to neglect, poor urban planning, population loss, and a myriad of other factors. Detroit has never been a vacation destination but it is still a good place to live and has many assets.
I was born in 1956, but as late as the very early 60s, I remember some of the old AAA signs like this that hadn’t yet been replaced on certain roads in California.
I believe it is a reproduction, but one of those traffic towers stands at the corner of Woodward and 9 mile in the suburb of Ferndale just north of Detroit
In most cities, the parents could request this sign if they like.
Now, I’ve seen some variations such as DEAF CHILD AREA, DEAF CHILD PLAYING, BLIND CHILD AREA, AUTISTIC CHILD AREA, etc.
There’s one of these in my town, probably put up around 1990, so that “deaf child” is now in his 40s!
I think those signs are effective in forcing the drivers to slow down to a “crawl” regardless of whether the deaf children live in the area…
Sort of like this:
(Shouldn’t it be “AS IF”?)
Great essay and good comments. Thanks to you all! Any of you ever turn street signs at intersections to face the wrong streets? Hmmm?
At an entrance to the two-block subdivision I grew up in, Elmwood and Oakwood Avenues in a suburban New York village, was a sign cautioning “SLOW CHILDERN.” Wish I had a picture . . .
“SLOW CHILDERN? What does that mean?”
“It means we got lousy schools.”
Not only do I feel bad for those “Slow Children” but those “Blind Driveways” are also very unfortunate.
Only thing I can add pertains to the back and support poles of some stop signs. On my last trip to Yellowstone NP I observed that the back of stop signs and support poles are painted brown. Likely to blend in with the scenery and creates a floating effect. I was a bit discombobulated after driving through an intersection, pulled a u-turn came back to it and thought the sign had disappeared. Not until I drove back through the intersection and looked out my window behind me that I saw the front of the stop sign. It made me realize how I also look at the back of traffic signs in opposing traffic for visual queues of what to expect. I’m kind weird like that.
Great article .
In the 1950’s & 1960’s the traffic island / towers were all over Boston and surrounding areas, I remember cops standing there directing traffic with their white gloves .
In rural areas telephone poles often had two white bands painted around their base to indicate a bus stop .
-Nate