The Script Style of House Numbers

John Savard
John Savard Posts: 1,219
edited March 16 in Type History
I found this video on YouTube about the style of digits used for house numbers:


and I felt that it would be of interest to many people here.
After watching the video more fully, though, I am not so sure. He doesn't really come to any conclusions, not being able to solve the mystery or even get very far towards doing so.
It is about numbers that look like this:
As a result of researching the subject after watching the video, when I see a house with this style of numbers... but not in the shiny silver color of nickel-plated aluminum, or the golden color of brass... but black, I won't be able to pass them without wondering, at least a tiny bit in a secret part of my soul... if those numbers are made of genuine Bower-Barff rustless iron!
Bower and Barff invented a process of coating iron with iron oxide to protect it from rust; it is one of the alternative materials listed in a catalog in which house numbers in this style appear.

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Comments

  • Florian Hardwig
    Florian Hardwig Posts: 288
    Don’t have time to watch the video right now, so apologies if I’m repeating things you already know. But here’s a 2018 tweet by Tobias Frere-Jones, showing such numerals in a c.1929 catalog by H W Knight & Son. In 2006, H&FJ made Bayside, a digital font based on that model, as part of the Numbers series.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,219
    edited March 16
    Although the video probably isn't worth watching in full, because it fails to fully resolve the mystery, it does note that the H. W. Knight and Son catalog isn't the origin of the style of numbers. Instead, instances of house numbers in this style go as far back as 1904. And, apparently, the reputed association with Chinoiserie is also spurious. So, while the video doesn't answer where those numbers came from, it does debunk false notions that have been echoed frequently.
    Here is the relevant page from the earliest example he found, a 1904 catalog by S. W. Reese & Co.:

  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,039
    edited March 17
    BTW, Internet Archive hosts the Knight catalog that Tobias referenced, and the Reese catalog John mentions above.
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,039
    edited March 17
    As the YouTuber, Dime Store Adventures, mentions (although fails to credit the Internet Archive), similar numbers are found in many other catalogs, including George Seere & Sons in 1929 catalog. Another from the earliest year mentioned above: Smith & Holtum, 1904. And here’s the earliest mentioned in the video: Yale & Towne, 1894.
  • Scott-Martin Kosofsky
    Scott-Martin Kosofsky Posts: 438
    edited March 17

    The “penmanship”style house numbers are one of the oddest visual clichés of the American landscape. It’s astonishing that they became as ubiquitous and standardized as the size of toilet paper rolls. But if you live in a Modernist house, as I did for ten years, you feel obliged to buy a set of three-dimensional, metal Neutra numbers, which have now become a cliché of their own.


    If you live in the countryside, as I do now, or in the more spacious suburbs, the numbers are most often placed on a mailbox, which is often the only thing close enough from the road to be seen. There, one often sees invariably ugly metal, adhesive backed numbers. But for those with an interest in typography, you can upload a PDF of anything you want and get back a vinyl decal in a variety of colors and reflective coatings. I set mine in a font that has figures of generous width and utterly unambiguous forms.


  • Scott-Martin Kosofsky
    Scott-Martin Kosofsky Posts: 438
    Thanks for the info, Mark! A friend had asked me about that—now I know.
  • Stuart Sandler
    Stuart Sandler Posts: 400
    Can't even think of a type designer living in a house they didn't design the numbers of :smiley: - Here's mine


  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,628
    I didn’t design my house numbers, but worked with John Downer who hand-painted them for me. The shapes are based on his Iowan Oldstyle, but with proportions and stroke weights adjusted to read well from the road.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,219
    Florian Hardwig said:
    In 2006, H&FJ made Bayside, a digital font based on that model, as part of the Numbers series.

    Incidentally, when searching to find a typeface with this style of numerals, MyFonts presented me with Trailer Park Numerals by Coniglio Type. Unlike Bayside, however, it is only stylistically reminiscent of this style of number without being a match.

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