New York City street signs are a study in evolution—from street names on the sides of buildings to pole-mounted square directionals to the rectangular green and white reflective signs we see on corners today.

But as thousands of city street signs were updated and replaced many times over the years, one 1940s-era sign on a side street in Murray Hill survives in the contemporary city.

It’s affixed to a street light at the end of an exit road on the Manhattan side of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. The exit road brings traffic to 34th Street—and this simple relic directs drivers toward their eastward or westward destination.

How did the 34th Street sign manage to hang on? Because it’s on an exit road, it was likely missed by the Department of Transportation (DOT), which handles street sign maintenance and upkeep.

It’s hard to know exactly when the sign went up. White on black signs became the preferred style in the 1930s, according to a post from the Bklyner blog. The tunnel wasn’t completed until 1940, which means the 34th Street sign could have been placed on the exit road in that decade.

The sign isn’t just a relic; it’s also a rebel. It doesn’t conform to the green and white standard, nor does it meet 2010 guidelines from the Federal Highway Administration that street signs contain capital and lowercase letters in Clearview typeface, per the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

But as a forgotten artifact of another New York City, let’s hope it stays in place—especially since the DOT has replaced other left-behind street signs, like the yellow and black 1960s-1970s sign on Union Square West at the bottom of this post.

Brooklyn also has—or had?—some old-school signs, like this one south of Prospect Park and another in Fort Greene. Hopefully they’re still with us.