Inside a Queens industrial warehouse, nearly every street sign visible across New York City is crafted by a team of 46 workers at the Maspeth Central Shop, operated by the New York City Department of Transportation. Despite advances in technology, the shop continues to produce more than 70,000 municipal signs annually, ranging from neighborhood street-cleaning notices to large reflective highway signs.

The facility is responsible for manufacturing and maintaining over one million signs throughout the five boroughs. When a sign—such as a stop sign—is damaged or a street is renamed, the Maspeth shop handles the replacement or update, ensuring city streets remain clearly marked and regulated. The team’s recent projects included creating 30 “Champions Way” signs for the celebratory parade honoring the New York Knicks’ 2026 NBA championship victory, a task supported by Mayor Zhanar Mamdani, who visited the shop firsthand.

Operations begin with sturdy 12-foot-by-4-foot sheets of aluminum, which are cut into smaller pieces by large metal shears operated by the staff. The thicker aluminum used for highway signs is designed to withstand harsh environmental conditions and is sometimes assembled from multiple pieces to create large signage. Workers then smooth the edges and punch mounting holes to prepare the panels for printing or vinyl application.

Signs destined for parking and street-cleaning regulations move to a screening room, where solvent-based ink is silk-screened onto the plates using numbered frames for standard designs like “No Parking Anytime.” Other signs, including highway and street-name signs, receive vinyl coatings embedded with reflective glass flecks to enhance nighttime visibility. Letterers then carefully apply pre-cut vinyl letters and numbers to the reflective background, a meticulous process that requires precision due to sharp edges.

The production time varies depending on sign complexity and size, ranging from 20 minutes to several hours. Finished signs are stored on-site, ready for deployment, while damaged signs retrieved from the streets undergo evaluation for repair or recycling. Some heavily modified or decorated signs, such as one stop sign altered with stickers to read “I will Never STOP Loving You,” are preserved as part of the shop’s collection.

Since mid-2024, the Maspeth shop has also produced limited-edition signs available for purchase online, including the “Champions Way” signs that sold out rapidly at $100 each, along with others named after cultural landmarks like Cornelia Street and Christopher Street Stonewall Place.

Beyond its functional role, the sign shop serves as a living archive of the city’s history. Walls are adorned with commemorative signs ordered under past administrations, celebrating milestones from Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the New York Yankees’ 1998 World Series win, as well as events like the Grammys and Operation Desert Storm.

For the workers, the craft represents more than just metal and ink. “This is the beginning of every sign in the city,” said Mike Fratini, deputy chief of the Maspeth operations. For letterer Kate Griffin, whose work included the recent Knicks celebration signs, the job connects the city’s people to its spirit. “The city really came together for the Knicks, and it was cool to be a little part of that,” she said.