A heron is featured on new signs announcing Little Silver.
Photo by Amy Byrnes
By Amy Byrnes
LITTLE SILVER – For decades, iconic carved wooden signs have welcomed people to the riverside borough.
The classic markers had a distinctly colonial vibe and featured illustrations of a steamboat and the year Little Silver was established.
But lately they had started to show their age and were “literally falling apart,” according to Mayor Robert Neff. Public works employees were finding sign parts in the grass. It seemed they were too far gone for fixing. “We thought it was time to bring the signs up to date,” he said.
At the end of October, new, cheerful “Welcome to Little Silver” signs started popping up around town, reflecting the borough’s history and geography.
Silverweb of Red Bank, a graphic design firm, created the new welcome signs. The firm had helped create a logo and website for recent Little Silver Day celebrations and was happy to work with the borough council members on the design, materials and size of the signs for the $19,000 capital improvement project. “It was really a compliment,” said Silverweb co-owner Jackie Mery.
Six of the signs feature the distinctive Little Silver Train Station, a nod to the borough’s busy downtown hub, and two signs feature a white heron soaring over the water, a delightful sight for travelers traveling over the Gooseneck and Oceanport Avenue bridges.
Silverweb designer and co-owner Nora Monaghan, who’s lived in Little Silver for 23 years, said she especially wanted to highlight Little Silver’s extensive water ways and the stately white birds that she sees whenever she’s driving in and out of the borough.
“Herons are just so majestic,” she said. “My other favorite landmark is the train station,” she added and Mery agreed and said it connotes “home.”
Once they came up with two designs, the borough went out to four sign fabricators to bid on the project and the winner was Stone Graphics Company, Inc. in Farmingdale. Owner Chris Stone said they applied the same weather resistant paint process used for signs the company created for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida that’s durable and – depending on care and environmental conditions – should welcome visitors to Little Silver for years to come.
Monaghan made sure to add details like windowpanes on the train station and the window boxes below that, at the real train station, are always filled by the Little Silver Garden Club with plantings that reflect the season. The heron signs include nautical roping lashed around the top of the sign’s posts and Monaghan said she’s asked that the borough plant seagrass at the base to complete the water way feel.
Monaghan explained the designs went through many iterations before landing on something that everyone could agree on.
“I wanted it to be perfect,” she said.
