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.

More Typeface Examples

I thought when I took a picture of the Administration Building that the sign on it was larger.  I was more interested in the architectural lines than the typeface, apparently.

[UPDATE:  After Googling around, I found more font examples on the signs for the Science Center and for the North and East Entrances of the Park.  I looked around the Department of the Interior's website, but this particular typeface isn't coming up.]

Visitor Center Mystery Typeface

Sunday during our trip to Crater Lake, we stopped at a visitor information site.  I liked the architecture there; it was designed to handle the ten months of snow which lingers at the high elevation of the lake.    



Of course, I had to take a close-up of one of the signs because I really liked the typeface.  The serifs make the signs easier to read, and the drop-down stems on the R's, the M's and the N's make this type face feel like a more laid-back copperplate.

Curious, I visited the National Park Service's typeface page:  http://www.nps.gov/hfc/services/identity/typefaces.cfm, but neither typeface listed there is what this sign is using.  It's not a part of their signage page, either.

Looks like a mystery to solve!