#ghost signs

[cithaerons]

Sonya Taaffe

[jeff-rees-jones]

Ghost signs, Crispin street, spitalfields, east London

[oldshowbiz]

San Francisco as it still looks in the year 2024.

[leftoverlondoner]

Courtney’s Department Stores used to sell the admirably inclusive “everything for everybody” in Lenoir, North Carolina, including, as far as I can make out, Selz Royal Blue Shoes.

[calamitygrrrl]

~ a recently revealed ghost sign in the metropolitan detroit area 💙

[wanderingnewyork]

Buildings and #ghost_signs in #Midtown_South, #Manhattan.

[inyoureyes69]

Hippo Size | ©inyoureyes69 | Linktree

[worstjourney]

I swear these things come and find me.

[circuitmouse]

[travelling-my-little-pony]

October is the month when Blossomforth goes to look for ghost signs and ghost adverts!

“Ghost” signs and adverts are the terms used to describe old signs (often painted onto walls) for things that are often no longer around.

Here is Blossomforth with a sign for Benson and Hedges cigarettes which has been partly painted over.

In South Wimbledon, in England.

[mapsoffun]

One of my favorite things about staying in Manhattan is finding gems like ghost signs on the sides of buildings, especially if I have any recognition of them. Perhaps one of the cooler ghost signs is that for the long-defunct department store Gimbels, which started in Milwaukee but then expanded to Philadelphia and eventually New York. (Fun facts: it was the first sponsor of the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade, the longest-running Thanksgiving parade in the country, and it’s the rival department store in The Miracle on 34th Street.)

I love that you can still see the ghost sign for the store here in New York, but even better is that the three-story copper skybridge is still intact, which is pretty amazing for a city that will destroy these things in the name of new construction*. As someone from the Philly area, it feels extra-significant that this building in all of its glory is still around since the Philadelphia location was notoriously destroyed to construct an outpost of DisneyQuest that was quickly abandoned, and now it’s a goddamned parking lot.

*Note: Scouting NY’s favorite skybridge was demolished a few years ago, sadly so go see the rest while you still can!

[afragmentcastadrift]

Demo is underway on this Olde Towne building, with support beams now up against its ghost sign. And the mystery of what exactly cost 5 cents will linger.

[cithaerons]

sonya taaffe

[hollyweirdangeleno]

[rustbeltjessie]

July 29. My town is really beautiful sometimes, especially just before sunset in summer.

[kittka42]

Davids and Daniel - King St Druggists

Davids and Daniel – King St Druggists

Banner image is of E. E. Rutherford’s Cut Rate Drug Store at Spadina and Nassau, circa 1915. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library. If I had a time machine, there’d be many aspects of 19th century Toronto life which I’d love to travel back to and experience firsthand – but medical care would not be one of them. That’s because, up until the mid-19th century, doctors were most commonly general…