Three eras in New York City history, three vastly different subway sign styles

How boring would the New York City subway system be if every station was built at the same time, resulting in a uniform look for the signs outside every subway entrance?

Luckily, that didn’t happen. As stations opened across the boroughs in the decades after the 1904 debut of the first stretch of the IRT, the signage at each stop reflected the design ethos of its era.

This Gilded Age gaslight-style subway sign (above) can be seen outside the Museum of Natural History subway stop. It’s a reproduction, sure, but also an homage to the museum’s move to this site on Central Park West in 1877, shortly before electric street lights arrived and put gas lamplighters out of business.

This rocket-shaped metallic sign outside the Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street station in Brooklyn feels very Art Deco, with its vertical and geometric features.

Turns out the Fourth Avenue portion of this now-combined station opened in 1933, when Art Deco reigned in Gotham. Hence, an Art Deco sign.

For years I was puzzled by these blue M signs at some subway entrances, like this one outside the Lexington Avenue and 68th Street station.

Apparently the M signs were an effort in 1960s rebranding, an attempt to give the New York City subway system—a combination of lines from three separate private companies—a unified look and logo.

“The New York City Transit Authority tried some out, and a blue M was introduced in the late 1960s when the Transit Authority was acquired by the statewide Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), but it never really caught on,” explains an informative site called The Beauty of Transport.

More than 50 years later, some of these ill-fated M signs remain.