Letters in Stone (and Metal)

 During my wanderings in New York, I took a few photos of various monuments and signs for their typefaces.

Hmm. I'm not sure if they can be called typefaces if they are carved.  In any case, the first example is from the 1700's and I took the photo for the ampersand -- it actually looks like the ligature "et".    I also thought the letter forms were very uniform; it wants to be a script but it almost looks like it was print.




The second set is from the 1920's.  It strikes me as quaint.  I think they wanted modern.  I think this is hard to read: the M's, N's and H's in Manhattan can be easily mistaken for one another.  And they've spelled New York with an em-dash.  And they painted the letters yellow.

What is interesting is that the letters are raised

But probably the strangest thing is that the text is underneath a relief of a 1600 Dutchman and Native American.

OK.  I really took this one for the architecture.  At the time I thought the sign was from 1900 or whenever they built the Lackawanna ferry slip, but maybe it's not.