The blue-and-white mosaic road indicators are an everlasting icon of Houston. However, very similar to the legendary Cotton-Eye Joe, the place did they arrive from? And the place did they go?
We Houstonians love our traditional blue-and-white mosaic road indicators. They present up on loads of native satisfaction merch, and a few of us even fee our personal tiles by way of Curb Enchantment Blues. But instantly ask a resident concerning the signage and most of us couldn’t inform you the place it got here from. Like mosquitoes, Mattress Mack, and refinery fires, the mosaics have all the time simply type of been right here, a load-bearing pylon of town’s acquainted iconography. However, as with all issues, they’ve a historical past, too. And fairly a curious one at that.
“They’re a chapter on this actually lengthy story of how Houston principally marketed streets, which has to do with town rising and paving streets, extra folks having automobiles, extra folks attempting to determine how one can get round,” says Jim Parsons, applications director at Preservation Houston.
Discussions relating to how one can mark Houston’s then-nascent road system started round 1903, in his estimation. Nevertheless, the mosaics didn’t begin dazzling native curbsides till round 1922, below the management of then-mayor Oscar F. Holcombe. The unique designers’ names had been misplaced to time, however Parsons theorizes that the acquainted visuals possible happened extra for the sake of development logistics than an intentional aesthetic assertion. He additionally factors out that the selection of blue and white was indicative of infrastructural developments on the time, and believes that this stems from the combo’s comparative legibility and visibility.
Concrete pillars corresponding to these had been one of many many choices the Metropolis of Houston experimented with when arising with uniform road signage.
The Metropolis of Houston initially experimented with vertical concrete road markers, painted black and white. A couple of stay, such because the one on Dunlavy close to Westheimer or the restored examples in Southampton close to Rice College. An try was made to make use of metallic or painted wooden indicators as nicely, however these choices encountered a significant problem: old-timey ne’er-do-wells.
“Neighborhood youngsters would both take the metallic indicators down or flip them in order that they confronted within the fallacious course to confuse folks,” Parsons says. “And so the mayor was like, nicely, these tile indicators will reduce down on our juvenile delinquents messing with our road indicators. So that they began placing them in.”
This led to what he refers to as a “jumble of road indicators” with no actual unifying look—one thing not unfamiliar to up to date Houstonians used to navigating town’s eclectic structure.
“You can apparently drive from neighborhood to neighborhood, and also you by no means knew what sort of signal you had been going to run into, if there was one in any respect, and quite a lot of them had been in unhealthy restore. The wooden ones had light, the metallic ones had rusted, the tiles and the curbs would get torn up after they would do road work they usually would not get changed,” Parsons says. “So we didn’t actually begin to get uniform road indicators like we have now now till the mid-Fifties…the tiles are only a chapter in that lengthy story.”
Lots of the mosaic road indicators have fallen into disrepair over the a long time, because the Metropolis of Houston doesn’t spend money on their restoration.
Sadly, as “only a chapter” somewhat than the ultimate resolution, the mosaics light out of recognition over time. Parsons mentions that in 1956, town began placing cash towards standardizing the road signage, and by that time lots of the mosaics had already deteriorated or disappeared.
It’s unknown what number of mosaic road indicators had been initially commissioned. The Blue Tile Undertaking, an initiative devoted to chronicling and preserving the extant examples, in addition to encouraging Houstonians to have their very own put in, couldn’t be reached for remark. Its web site has additionally been taken down and changed with a “Coming Quickly” banner. Nevertheless, Preservation Houston can also be concerned in serving to people and neighborhood associations with maintaining the tiles intact.
“Folks fell in love with them and began to see them as an emblem of Houston…The town considers them to be out of date road markers, similar to the concrete markers, too,” Parsons says. “The town will not be going to formally do any upkeep on these, as a result of town’s official road indicators [are] the metallic ones which are on poles or hanging by visitors lights…in order that’s why you see the blue tile markers disappearing.”
Preservation Houston often receives calls from involved residents asking how they will rescue their road’s mosaics. Parsons and his workforce level them within the course of Houston Public Works officers and coach them on how one can ask development crews to maintain the indicators in a single piece when jackhammering down a curb. These both find yourself in non-public collections or reinstalled. Some additionally attain out to inquire about replacements for long-lost tiles, corresponding to choose streets within the Woodland Heights neighborhood.
“It’s an attention-grabbing reminder of the steps that we took in attempting to determine how one can do one thing that no one thinks about right now,” Parsons says.
