Skip to main content

Meadville's PennDOT Road Sign Scultpture Garden

The PennDOT Road Sign Scultpture Garden in Meadville, Pennsylvania is a joint public art project between PennDOT and Allegheny College that began in 2002 to give a distinct look to Meadville's gateway from the west. Using recycled signs and tires, it is truly one of a kind. The sign garden is located at a Meadville PennDOT residency at US 6, US 19 and US 322's junction with PA 102, east of Interstate 79 and west of downtown Meadville. I've had a few occasions to check out the sign sculpture garden myself and I fully endorse recycling signs in this manner. It's a nice little stop to stretch your legs. I took the following pictures in September 2007.

One of the first parts of the project, and what you'll notice first if you are coming from the west, is the Signs and Flowers part of the art exhibit. This is also next to where you would likely park your car if you wanted to stop and take a look around.


It's a flower garden... of signs.

Blooming sign flower.

Blooming sign flower.

There's also a wall of signs called the Read Between the Signs mural that is alongside the highway as well which is worth checking out. 1200 feet of signs in all from what I'm told.

Gives you a little perspective on how tall the signs are.

And how long the sign wall goes on for.

Up, up and away!

Ferris Wheel.

Do 6!

Signs in the weeds.

Signs about town.


Some other articles about the sign garden...
http://sites.allegheny.edu/news/2014/09/24/kaleidoscope-public-art-abounds-in-meadville/
http://uncoveringpa.com/penndot-road-sign-sculpture-garden-meadville
https://pittsburghorbit.com/2015/08/26/the-meadville-penndot-road-sign-sculptures-part-2-the-flower-garden/

Also, see my complete set of photos from the sign garden on Flickr.

Comments

penndot hours said…
The penndot hours oversees highway programs and transportation issues in Pennsylvania's Common Wealth. Additionally, it deals with issues related to rural transportation, railroads, ports, and waterways. Most of Penndot's employees are involved in restoration, maintenance, and expansion of the state highway system. In addition, it has started focusing on intermodal transportation, which is very effective eat way to increase both public and commercial transportation. The department is also responsible for registering motor vehicles and issuing driver's licenses.

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third