Name of the shape on the New York state route marker?

[MNHighwayMan]

Is there a name for this shape? Or at least some way to concisely describe it?

[bandit957]

Is there a name for this shape? Or at least some way to concisely describe it?

It looks like a book blowing a bubble.

[bandit957]

I also think it looks sort of like the Children's Television Workshop sign they used to hold up at the end of 'Sesame Street'.

[bandit957]

[cl94]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

[KEVIN_224]

To me, it always look like a kid drew the big center piece of a wrestling championship belt.

[hbelkins]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

It's a poor simulation of it, then. A more accurate representation of the coat of arms would be the Mexican federal route marker.

[MNHighwayMan]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

My apologies if it's been asked many times. I searched and couldn't find anything, though.

[empirestate]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

Except...it isn't.

[Alps]

I thought it had a mountain in the middle to symbolize the Catskills and Adirondacks.

[jakeroot]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

My apologies if it's been asked many times. I searched and couldn't find anything, though.

Who's "we"? I've never seen this question asked either. If it's been covered in the Northeast thread, not everyone posts in there. Myself for example. Probably MNHighwayMan as well.

Except...it isn't.

No kidding. It looks vaguely like a very simplified version of the shield in the middle, but that's about it.

If they wanted it to actually look like the shield in the middle, they should have just taken the shield verbatim. It's a very workable design that could be easily stretched to accommodate three digits. In fairness, I quite like New York's shield design as-is (it reminds me of the Autobahn highway shield).

[SidS1045]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

Except …it isn't.

To be more precise, it's an outline shape drawn around the coat of arms.

[empirestate]

We've been over this many times. It's the state coat of arms.

My apologies if it's been asked many times. I searched and couldn't find anything, though.

Who's "we"? I've never seen this question asked either. If it's been covered in the Northeast thread, not everyone posts in there. Myself for example. Probably MNHighwayMan as well.

I have definitely heard it a number of times before. I may even have seen the source of the claim, many moons ago, but I can't directly recall it right now. But as you can probably tell, I've focused on my home state since the early days of online roadsdom.

Except...it isn't.

No kidding. It looks vaguely like a very simplified version of the shield in the middle, but that's about it.

If they wanted it to actually look like the shield in the middle, they should have just taken the shield verbatim. It's a very workable design that could be easily stretched to accommodate three digits. In fairness, I quite like New York's shield design as-is (it reminds me of the Autobahn highway shield).

Well, it's not the shield as depicted in this rendering of the coat of arms, although heraldry tells us that arms can be drawn in any way that matches the blazon. So it's possible there's another rendering of the arms that used this shield shape, and that's what it's based on, but that's a stretch.

As for its name, well, it's certainly a shield of some kind, and the heraldic term for that is an escutcheon. So, to answer the OP, that's your best bet for what to call it. (Of course, the US and Interstate shields are also escutcheons, as are some other states' and countries', so the term doesn't uniquely describe this exact shape.)

[hbelkins]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

[kphoger]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

I think you're missing something fundamental here.  It's not the shield in the middle of the seal; it's all of it.

[empirestate]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

I think you're missing something fundamental here.  It's not the shield in the middle of the seal; it's all of it.

That one I'm not so sure about. For the record, I don't doubt that it's the shield from the coat of arms; I only point out that it doesn't resemble it in the image given, nor can I recall the citation establishing that origin. However, doing a Google image search for the state seal, I do indeed find some other renderings that look a little more like the route marker (and some that definitely don't). Also, the early design of the route marker is somewhat taller than many current variants, and thus looks at least a bit closer to the "Mexico"-shaped escutcheon in the current arms (see: https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=3521.msg160222#msg160222).

[hbelkins]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

I think you're missing something fundamental here.  It's not the shield in the middle of the seal; it's all of it.

That wasn't included in the first image.

[Buck87]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

I think you're missing something fundamental here.  It's not the shield in the middle of the seal; it's all of it.

If that's the case, it's a really obscure way to come up with a shape

[jakeroot]

Who's "we"? I've never seen this question asked either. If it's been covered in the Northeast thread, not everyone posts in there. Myself for example. Probably MNHighwayMan as well.

I have definitely heard it a number of times before. I may even have seen the source of the claim, many moons ago, but I can't directly recall it right now. But as you can probably tell, I've focused on my home state since the early days of online roadsdom.

Well, I would hope you had heard of the inquiry before. You're name is empirestate!

[kphoger]

I thought I had posted here yesterday. The coat of arms looks more like Mexico's federal route marker than it does New York's state route marker.

I think you're missing something fundamental here.  It's not the shield in the middle of the seal; it's all of it.

That one I'm not so sure about. For the record, I don't doubt that it's the shield from the coat of arms; I only point out that it doesn't resemble it in the image given, nor can I recall the citation establishing that origin. However, doing a Google image search for the state seal, I do indeed find some other renderings that look a little more like the route marker (and some that definitely don't). Also, the early design of the route marker is somewhat taller than many current variants, and thus looks at least a bit closer to the "Mexico"-shaped escutcheon in the current arms (see: https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=3521.msg160222#msg160222).

So, apparently, it's me who's missing something fundamental...

[machias]

I'm pretty sure it's the coat of arms without the indents near the top on the side so that it didn't get confused with the US Route Marker. If you look at the original incarnation of the route shield, it's a little more of a vertical rectangle than what we have today.

[kphoger]

Or it's just a shield that happens to bear some resentence to the coat of arms by virtue of, well, their both being shields.

[mgk920]

When I first saw one on my first roadtrip into the area (mid-late 1990s), my first thought was 'Chippendale'.

Mike

[abqtraveler]

When I first saw one on my first roadtrip into the area (mid-late 1990s), my first thought was 'Chippendale'.

Mike

It's the state Coat of Arms.

[jakeroot]

When I first saw one on my first roadtrip into the area (mid-late 1990s), my first thought was 'Chippendale'.

It's the state Coat of Arms.

Are you following along or...?