They tell us where we are and where to go. What more could we want from standard street and roadside directional signs? Ubiquitous in our car culture, we pass one after another even on short drives. Taken for granted, they’re truly noticed and appreciated them only when one is missing or we’ve lost our way. Like anyone else, I rely on them wherever I go. I don’t doubt their value. But what really grabs my attention is a sign out of the ordinary.
Almost universally made of reflective, adhesive vinyl pasted over aluminum, standard street and directional signs are perfectly utilitarian, relatively easy to read and understand. There are slight variations in typography, color, or the presence of government seals, but the monotony of off-white lettering on a green background is the rule. Yet every once in a while, I pass signs that buck the lookalike trend. Whether they supplement or substitute for regulation signs, they convey much more about a place than names and distances. Distinctive signs may speak to creativity, history, a sense of humor, or a special notion of place. To sight one is to feel you’re in a singular community.
The oldest, longest lasting, and least noticed road signs are the milestones marking distances along some of New England’s two-lane blacktops that, since colonial times, have served as arteries of travel. No more than four feet tall, and often smaller than that, they’re typically carved with mileage to the county seat. Many have been lost to vandalism and road widening, but some remain undisturbed where they were planted over 200 years ago. They’re hard to spot at contemporary speed limits, and their longevity has made them more significant as temporal rather than spatial markers.
Much less durable than milestones, there’s something nevertheless intriguing about old fashioned wooden box signs painted white with directions and sometimes mileages to various destinations indicated by a black hand with a pointed index finger. Placed at crossroads, some are small boxes on a post like the one in Harwinton, Connecticut that indicates the way to large places like Hartford and tiny hamlets like Bakersville. Others are freestanding rectangular structures like the one in Warwick Village, Massachusetts which not only gives direction and milage, but also the town’s elevation and the height of a nearby mountain. Unlike milestones, these wooden signs require constant maintenance. When I see one, I know a community cares about its roots.
There’s a charm and bewitching fascination to those pointed fingers, a punctuation mark called a manicule. First used in medieval manuscripts to bring attention to a text, they’ve also appeared in commercial advertising and even the “Return to Sender” stamp of the U.S. Postal Service. There’s something primal and authoritative about a pointing hand. When I see a manicule, I want to follow.
I’ve seen pointing fingers painted on stone posts at some intersections, but simple arrows are also used. Such is the case in Sudbury, Massachusetts where the stones indicate destinations without mileages. Sudbury also has distinctive cast metal signs with raised white characters on a black background that sit atop tall poles and use arrows with mileages to show direction and distance to nearby towns.
A singular directional sign known as the Liberty Pole stands at the junction of U.S. Route 44 and South and North Brook Streets in the Clark’s Corner section of Hampton, Connecticut. First erected by tavern owner and ardent Free Soil Party advocate Jonathan Clark in 1849, it consists of two thirty-foot-tall natural wood poles painted white, between which is strung a board with mileages to various locations and five finely rendered manicules. Above this is written “Free Soil Mail Stage Road Daily.” Old Glory waves from one of the poles, and it’s topped by a weathervane. Clark is said to have kept a daily record of wind direction. It’s an ingenious, quirky structure remarkable for continued existence in three different centuries. Rebuilt several times over the years, it expresses something elemental about community spirit.
Perhaps the most elegant and artful directional sign I’ve ever seen is planted on the northwest corner of the Norfolk, Connecticut green where U.S. Route 44 takes a tight turn through town. Two rectangular panels at 90 degrees to each other and supported on fluted round posts not only indicate mileages to various towns in an arresting red typography, each panel is beautifully painted with a running deer and rabbit. The unique sign not only gives mileage to other places, by its unique design it tells you where you are. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it.
I have a particular fondness for highly individual street signs. It may be because most of my life I’ve lived on a street that most of the time hasn’t had one. Maybe the powers-that-be figure you must know where you are when you get here. Afterall, the street is only 344 feet long, has triangular grassy islands at each end, and sits in the center of a small town
Distinctive street signs are found in a neighborhood of Southbury, Connecticut known as Churaevka, or Russian Village, where Russian emigres settled in the early twentieth century. Mounted on 4-inch-by-4-inch wooden posts with somewhat gothic style finials, the street names are painted on narrow pointed boards in Cyrillic-like typography. The Russians may be long gone, but the signs remain a remembrance.
Birdhouses on tall posts emblazoned with street names have served for years beside standard markers in Union, Maine, a community of about 2,500 just a 35-minute drive southeast of Augusta. I passed through town a couple years ago, happily imagining birds living inside the signs. I thought of bright plumage and birdsong, of cardinals and orioles. There must be a kind of joyful eccentricity in such place. More than delight in the unusual signposts, I was struck by the commitment of effort and money that must go into maintaining them. These street signs not only let me know what road I was on, they conveyed something about the kind of town I was traveling through—creative, interested in the natural world.
Even a simple type of sign can set a place apart. Rural East Hartland, Connecticut marks its streets with 4-inch-by-4-inch pointed wooden posts. They’re painted white with the road name in black letters displayed vertically. Unlike those in any other nearby town, these plain signposts, likely fabricated not far from where they stood, seemed a symbol of a practical can-do character. More than just identifying streets, they provide insight into the nature of the place.
Street and directional signs are everyday conveniences of great practical value. Travel would be a confused mess without them. But if creatively conceived, they can also say more about a community or neighborhood than where you are and where to go. They can be signs of something greater than location and direction. Even among mundane objects, there are opportunities beyond the ordinary.
