Tim Masters was driving home to Bethesda, Md., from the Library of Congress a couple of weeks ago when he saw the signs. Or, rather, when he didn’t see the signs.

Tim didn’t see a single one of those distinctive signs that for decades have marked the entrances to federal buildings in the District.

If you’re from Washington — or ever watched a news report from here — you can probably conjure one of the signs in your mind’s eye right now: wide, brown, about 10 feet tall, with white Helvetica letters spelling out “Environmental Protection Agency,” “Department of Commerce,” “General Services Administration Building,” etc.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about each sign was the way the section that had the agency’s name on it bowed out in a sinuous curve, explaining the term by which the GSA referred to it: a ribbon sign.

Along with the brown, M-emblazoned pylons outside Metro stations, the federal ribbon signs were part of our city’s landscape, like the saguaro of Arizona or the mighty redwoods of the Pacific Northwest.

Smaller signs bearing more information have gone up in recent months in front of federal buildings in Washington, replacing the ribbon signs designed by Peter Masters. (John Kelly/TWP)

And now they are gone, replaced by signs that are smaller but, I’m told, more informative.

I kind of miss the old signs, but not as much as Tim does. You see, Tim’s late father, Peter Masters, used to be the GSA’s art director and was responsible for the signs.

It can be easy to forget that every thing — as opposed to animals, vegetables or minerals — was designed by an actual person. Every obsidian spear point, every oyster fork, every locomotive, every place mat.

And every sign. In the case of the GSA ribbon sign, that person was Peter Masters.

He was born Peter Arany in Vienna in 1922. When World War II broke out, Peter was working on an English farm. He volunteered for the British Army and was trained as a commando, part of an 87-man unit composed of immigrants from Nazi-occupied countries.

Peter took part in the D-Day landing with a folding bicycle strapped to his back. After the war, he studied design in London, then went to Yale and the Parsons School of Design. He settled in Washington with his wife, Alice, and became art director for Channel 9. In the 1960s, he joined the newly formed Office of Economic Opportunity, where he created the logos for such War on Poverty programs as Job Corps, Head Start and VISTA. Peter’s logos tended to include an arrow pointed up, a testament, no doubt, to his optimism.

In 1969, Peter moved to the General Services Administration. He designed the ribbon sign with the help of his colleague Charles McClendon. The signs were first installed in 1976.

When he was at the General Services Administration, Peter Masters designed the distinctive brown signs that graced the entrances to federal buildings in Washington for 40 years. (Family photo)

“My dad was an immigrant to this country and yet he ended up designing these signs emblazoned at the entrances to these federal buildings,” said Tim, 56, a video producer and host of a weekly jazz program on WPFW radio. “I think that’s kind of a beautiful point to make. . . . He was very happy to be in the United States.”

One interesting detail about Peter’s signs: They had the words “United States” at the top, a redundant shout-out, perhaps, to the one-time refugee’s adopted country.

Tim said he and his siblings — sisters Anne and Kim — loved seeing the signs: “It was a tremendous source of family pride, obviously, and at the same time like a precious family secret, something that we were the only ones who knew about and were party to. Every time we would drive by one, someone in the car would point it out.”

Forty years is a pretty good run for a bit of design. The new signs are also brown, but narrower. They include the address, the name of the building and tenant, and a URL for smartphone-toting tourists. Explains the GSA Web page on the new signage: “Web content provides a free platform for tenant agencies to share information about their mission with the public and link to their website, events, and initiatives.”

I asked GSA who created the new signs, but a spokesman told me there was “no individual attribution to designers at GSA.” (You know who you are.)

Now that the fiberglass ribbon signs have been uprooted, Tim was hoping to rescue one from the dump. It would be a lovely reminder of his father, who died in 2005.

“People put those elephant and donkey sculptures up, or the panda bears,” Tim said. “What would be wrong with having one of those signs in the back yard?”

Alas, GSA told me that the old signs are federal property, cannot be given to members of the public and must be disposed of properly.

They will help future historians date photos and TV news reports: The ribbon sign, born 1976; died 2017.

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.