Around Lviv etched window inscriptions that date from before the war can still be found, though not many — glass is the most fragile of all remnants of the past. Most of these are old street names and building numbers, conscription numbers, and other informative messages that helped people orient […]
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It is not uncommon in Przemyśl, Poland, to find two, three, or even four different street signs on one building—dating to different periods and regimes: the Austrian Empire, interwar Poland, Communist Poland, and modern Poland. This is because in Poland there was never a campaign to remove Polish inscriptions from […]
Considering how many times street names and the official language were changed in Lviv, it’s quite miraculous that we can still find street signage from previous eras around the city. But in fact, quite a few prewar Polish-language street signs remain hidden (sometimes quite literally under paint or plaster) in […]
One of the best well-preserved examples of prewar Lviv hand-painted signs is found on the façade of a lovely cafe called Sztuka. A cafe of the same name existed in Lviv during the Austrian era. Today’s cafe, though continuing the tradition of the original cafe which was founded in 1909, is located […]
Buildings in Prague have two numbers: a descriptive number (číslo popisné) and a reference number (číslo orientační). The descriptive number is unique within one cadastral area. Today these numbers can be found on red plaques, but the original numbers were either painted or engraved onto the buildings or etched onto […]
These bilingual German and Czech street signs (some include descriptive house numbers) date from before WWI, likely before 1892 when the Czech-controlled City Hall decided to replace the city’s bilingual street signs with exclusively Czech ones.
I found a couple descriptive building number plaques that date from the interwar period when Uzhhorod was part of Czechoslovakia. The signs were written in three languages: Rusyn (Ukrainian), Czech, and Hungarian. Descriptive numbers would have been unique within the municipal part (a village, a quarter, mostly for one cadastral […]
Traces of the past in Klosterneuburg, an ancient town right outside of Vienna. Boot Scraper Guard Stones Hoisting Beam for Lifting Goods Building Number and Conscription Number Metal Shutter
Historic street signs still adorn many of Vienna’s buildings — at least, I assume the rectangular and oval metal plaques with building number and street name date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they look very similar to Lviv’s prewar street signs. Unlike in Lviv, the official language […]
