The history of blue-and-white street tiles giving Houston some curb appeal

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- You've likely noticed the blue-and-white tiles that indicate street names on some curbs across the City of Houston.

There's also a good chance you've noticed the tiles are having a moment in local pop culture.

They've recently been incorporated into the new Texans uniforms, Astros merchandise, and even a coffee shop.

"The blue tiles bring us together," Joey Sanchez of the Blue Tile Project said. "They really are the essence of a Houstonian."

Sanchez said he started the Blue Tile Project in 2015 to celebrate and preserve Houston's history.

"My wife and I took a bike ride around the city, and we started to document all of the blue tiles we could," Sanchez said.

He said they also got help at that time from other Houstonians who used social media to post photos of signs they discovered.

Sanchez told ABC13 there were around 10,000 of the signs across Houston at the peak of their usage.

"The 1920s is when the blue-tile motif was created as the original street sign of Houston," he said. "They popped up from Fifth Ward to Montrose to the Heights and everywhere in between."

Sanchez told ABC13 there's a bit of folklore about why the signs had to be created.

"Vigilante kids were stealing the street signs, and so they wanted to embed them into the curb," Sanchez said. "You'll see subway tiles in New York, and this is our unique symbol for Houston."

He told Eyewitness News that there are around 4,000 such signs still in use across the city and that the Blue Tile Project hopes to add more in the future.