[street_blades] A Typical Hard-Working Salem Street Sign

1334. Today, we visited Salem to see an exhibit at Mission Mill Museum and to get some ... what else ... snaps of street signs and the like.

At the corner of Church and Mission Streets, SE, stands a signpost that illustrates just how overworked some Salem street sign assemblies can get:

From the top:

1. Historic District (Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park) Sign topper;


2. Blade for 500 block of Mission St SE;


3. Blade for 700 block of Church St SE;


4. Finger blade directing you up Church St to Pringle Park;


5. Finger blade directing you across Mission St and into Bush's Pasture Park to the nearby Bush House Art Gallery and Museum;


6. Your average everyday standard STOP octagon.

They do make their signposts do amazing amounts of dutiful work. Some blades require the application of supports, making it all like kind of like a majuscule Y, to give the sign the strength it needs to not bend over

The finger blad reading "HISTORIC MUSEUM/ART GALLERIES" deserves special note as to style. The color scheme – black type on an off-white background – is typical of the standard Salem street blade style through about 1980. After that, it was white on green. Moreover, the type face is plainly different; particularly compare the C in "Church" to the C at the end of "HISTORIC". The round letters are oval rather than elliptical, with straight sides and more perfectly circular tops and bottoms. This was also the standard Salem style, until the signs became white-on-green.

More commentary about Mission Mill and a fun but ultimately unhappy stop at the Salem Cherriots Downtown Transit Center to come.

Tags: Salem, street blades, street blade gallery, Salem photos