This page is a collection of old signs and other nifty traffic items (other than signals) that were photographed on the streets of New Jersey. I have also put together a separate gallery page of NJ signs that have been collected.
Vintage NJ Sign Photos
Early Signage – Prior to the 1927 Highway Numbering System
This detail from a 1926 photograph in Kingston shows a mind-blowing array of quaint road furniture of the time: From left to right: A flashing beacon (manufacturer unknown) with instructions to call for repair, a set of wooden guidepost signs with distances to New Brunswick, Elizabeth, Newark, Rocky Hill, Somerville and Morristown, a first-generation NJ State Route 13 shield (which would soon be renumbered as NJ Route 27) on the bottom, and last, but not least, a Lincoln Highway marker.
RR crossing at 14th Street in Ocean City (photo grabbed from Facebook)
Cast Iron and Aluminum Signage – Late 1920s through the 1940s
Various views of the once ubiquitous NJ cast signage…
Sometimes, travelers posed with them (above)…
Cast signs maintained and replaced… That’s Camden’s own Ed Hoffman with the replacement green sign and the retired cast sign. Ed can also be seen further down the page, installing green signs in Millville. And, I wonder if that’s Ed again painting the SLOW DANGEROUS INTERSECTION in the NJ DOT archive. One of these same signs can be seen in service in the next photo, from Flemington, 1938. Note also the stacks of obstruction warning reflectors in the paint roller photo – the only one of these I am aware of existing today is in Ed Tapanes’s collection.
Waterway Markers
Ben Kranefeld sent me the historical excerpts below, culled by historian Paul W. Schopp at Stockton State College. Cast iron waterway markers date as far back as 1930. I assume the 20″ x 15″ spec with concrete posts was very short-lived, if implemented at all. All the signs I have seen are/were on iron posts, and at least many of them, including the one I have, are 30″ wide.
White Sheet Metal Signs and Shields – starting ca. 1950
Changing of the guard… This photo, taken in December 1952 at the Milltown Circle in North Brunswick, shows signage in transition before the state’s highway renumbering of January 1953. Drivers here were being familiarized with the new designations of US Routes 130 and 1, which were replacing the old NJ Routes 25 and 26, respectively. The new US 1 and US 130 shields were using what I believe was the 1948 MUTCD specification of black print on white squares.
A 1950s view of US Route 1, looking northbound toward the old traffic circle at NJ-18… The NJ-18 shield on the right and the ALL TURNS sign in the median are the new black-on-white sheet metal kind. Although this was still a rural area on the outskirts of New Brunswick, the traffic was getting heavy, and a neon (RED) SIGNALS AHEAD stanchion was installed to help slow down the approach to the busy circle.
New Jersey didn’t stay with the white signs for long. It isn’t easy to even find photos of them, but above are a few that I have found. The SHORE POINTS sign in New Brunswick is posted above newer (green) signage for NJ Route 18.
Green Signs and Shields – ca. 1957-1962
By about 1957, New Jersey switched to green cutout shields with numerals and borders in white reflective sheeting. I don’t know if these green shields adhered to the MUTCD specs of the day or not. They only lasted into the early 1960s, when NJ started using the new MUTCD standard, which had changed to the white-on-black squares we are familiar with today. And I spy Ed Hoffmann again, installing green shields in Millville in 1958.
Passaic County’s Box-Shaped Guide Signs
Passaic County, where I grew up, used box-shaped sheet metal guidepost signs. I assumed these (being sheet metal) only went back to about 1950, but I was wrong. The photos above shows them posted in Paterson in 1931 and in Clifton in 1934. They were somewhat confusing at first glance, but I think they indicated what town you were in on top, followed by a list of towns you were heading toward if you continued straight, and then in the arrow at bottom, the principal town in the direction of the arrow. (see more of these in the Survivors section below)
Other Cool Old Signs
Survivors in the Wild
This awesome cast iron sign with cateye reflectors is rusting away on Allwood Road in Clifton. The photo was sent to me by retired Clifton PD officer Bob Bracken, who is trying to have it publicly preserved by the city.
The State Seal adorns a bridge abutment on NJ Route 35 in Woodbridge. (Library of Congress photo, date unknown)
January 2023 – To my great delight, I discovered that Asbury Park is still maintaining some of its electro-mechanical controllers and incandescent signals. I took photos of this controller cabinet pair that is still running a pair of hanging Marbelite signal clusters at the corner of Cookman and Bond Avenues.
I believe the top cabinet contains some kind of Eagle EF controller. The base cabinet is embossed by… drum roll, please… Horni and Highway Signal & Sign Company! This rare cabinet, used for power supply, metering and fuses, was made by HSS circa early ’50s, after Horni was out of business. This part is a “missing link” that ties HSS back to Horni. My theory on the history of the relationship of Horni and HSS is written in the Horni Epilogue.
Union and Salem counties favored this style of cast iron signs with the sharp corners and long-stemmed arrows.
You simply can’t document cool old signage in New Jersey without help from Steve Alpert. His Alp’s Roads site is quite a trip! The photos I have copied here are just the tip of a huge iceberg of coolness he has personally photographed in NJ (and beyond) over the years.
Here we have attained porcelain nirvana in Essex County. The next three photos (below) show cast iron guideposts in Union County – one being similar to my own from elsewhere in the county. Note that the last digit in the cast ROUTE 22 banners are actually touched up to change the original number from “29” to “22”, which occurred with the 1953 NJ highway renumbering.
Paul Havemann sent me photos of a couple of county line markers that he took over the years. The cast iron sign on the left was on the border of Pequannock and Wayne until 2005. The newer (I’d estimate late 1950s) sign on the right stood on NJ route 23 near Smoke Rise into the late 1990s.
Ben Kranefeld has also photographed a number of these county line markers.
Another photo sent by Paul Havemann; these “box” style guidepost signs were once a Passaic County thing. By my time, these were all pretty faded, like you see here. The ones in this photo are extra cool in that they were mounted on concrete posts similar to those once used for mailboxes in Jersey.
Street Lamps
This traffic light in South Orange goes back to probably the 1940s, but the gas lamp behind it dates back to the late 19th century. When I lived in South Orange in the early 90s, the town still maintained about 1,400 of them throughout the twn.
Mail Boxes
Many New Jerseyans my age and older ought to remember these quaint little mail boxes on concrete posts, which went extinct probably over 30 years ago. I have seen a couple of the box-less posts still hanging around. This box was photographed at Monument Square in New Brunswick during the 1958 holiday season.
Banner photo: The cover of the Oct 19, 1958 issue of the Sunday Newark News Magazine, showing signage of the day.
Garden State Signals 