Ghost signs

[Dinerman]

hey all- who's got pics of ghost signs?

y'know- the ones painted up on buildings back in the golden era that have faded to almost nothing.

[J. M. Stovall]

Here's a flickr group I ran across once on that subject.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/10285999@N00/

[Dinerman]

I just saw so many in Richmond. It really blew my mind.

[Twitch]

A search on your Google or Yahoo using "antique signs" or "antique road signs" "vintage signs" "vintage neon signs". "old brick building" gets better results than "vintage." Substituting the word antique for vintage produces a few different images, but some cross over. For some more fun look up vintage, old or antique gas stations and there'll be those and associated road signage. "Old" and "vintage motel sign" gets lots of neat images. "faded sign" gets some as well as "ghost sign."

Old, vintage and antique work well with singluar of sign, building instaed of plural. Get more hits with "...sign" than with "...signs."

My screensaver/wallpaper utility is a freebee from webshots.com and I have all sorts of categories with 1000s of pics including "Places" where I have old buildings, signs and landscapes.

Have fun looking!

[happyfilmluvguy]

I've seen a couple around various buildings around Downtown LA and Hollywood. I'm glad to know they've survived for so long

[CharlieH.]

Here's a somewhat vast gallery of ghost signs in New York:

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/ADS/ADS%...GE/adhome.html

(And you might want to poke around the rest of the site for more NYC archaeology)

[Twitch]

And if you like old brick buildings with a history check out http://www.detroityes.com/

[The Wolf]

A while ago some siding was removed from a San Francisco office building. it uncovered a 1950s Shasta soft drink ad painted on the side. Someone from the building told Shasta's headquarters. Representatives came out to find that it had been painted over almost immediately.

Sincerely,
The WOLF

[LizzieMaine]

Ghost signs have been a passion of mine since I was a little girl!

We used to have a lovely specimen downtown here -- the slowly-fading remains of a Coca-Cola sign on the side of a drugstore that had been on the same corner for at least 80 years. I used to use it as a landmark when telling people how to find me ("turn left at the Coke sign..."), but this summer a local bank bought that entire block and evicted the drugstore and the other tenants in order to turn it into their corporate headquarters. Before I had a chance to run down with my camera to get a last shot, they'd sandblasted every bit of the old paint off the wall. I'm still fuming over that.

When the theatre where I work was being restored a couple years back, they took off some awful aluminum siding to reveal a brick wall with the barely-visible traces of a Socony gasoline sign from the "Fireproof Garage" that used to be next door. Those bricks, alas, were too far gone to save -- and the restoration didn't go so far as to repaint the sign!

In Lewiston, Maine, about two hours from here, there's an absolutely gorgeous Uneeda Biscuit wall -- it's facing away from the sun most of the time, so it's faded very little -- and the colors still pop.

[BegintheBeguine]

Have to remember to take a picture of these when I get a camera:
OLIVER CHILLED PLOW WORKS along the top of an old building
TOPPER BEER with the hat, painted ad on a brick wall
I love ghost signs, too, I never knew what to call them.