A Signman's Album

One of the more fortuitous breakthroughs I had in researching this neon book of mine was when I managed to get in touch with Justin Langsner, the third-generation proprietor of the LaSalle Sign Corp. of Brooklyn.  In addition to sharing some incredibly valuable insights and anecdotes, Mr. Langsner lent me a small trove of old photographs he happened to have lying around, a selection of which are reproduced here below.  Not glamour shots, these are working reference photos dating from the 1960s and 70s. They offer an interesting window into the neon business in New York during a time of change both for the city and for the signs themselves.

 

LaSalle made and installed these signs for the original Papaya King, at Third Avenue and East 86th Street, in 1964.  The signs survive today.  (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)

Bressner Appliances, at 1498 Third Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, installed c. 1963.  The vertical sign survives, its neon tubes removed and sign faces covered over. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)

A LaSalle service truck. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.) 

Eneslow Shoes, at 2563 Webster Avenue in the Bronx. Eneslow has since decamped (the company is still alive and well elsewhere), but the sign remains in place, sans-neon, ghosts of its old lettering still visible. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.) 

A boom truck (not LaSalle's) dressed for labor action.  Most of New York's neon signs were union made. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.) 

An insurance job:  like other sign companies, LaSalle's services included sizing up damage claims for insurance companies.  This photo shows Krasne's Super Market, at 1008 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, which had sustained damage during a storm. Both supermarket and sign are gone today, but a big letter "K" in the masonry of the cornice above remains.  (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.) 

Top: Smiler's Delicatessen, 106 Seventh Avenue South, in Greenwich Village (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)  Bottom: Frame enlargement from the film Manhattan (1979), showing Smiler's at far left.

LaSalle's sign for Smiler's Delicatessen on Seventh Avenue South made a small cameo in the classic opening sequence to Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.  "Smiler's was run by a very smart old lady - Sarah Smiler, I think," Mr. Langsner remembers.  Sam Langsner, Justin's father, once happened to notice some delivery men pilfering from a shipment of merchandise they had brought to the store, and mentioned it to old Mrs. Smiler.  "Sam," she said, "listen:  I live in a great big penthouse apartment, and I make more money than the President of the United States.  If you think I'm gonna spend $10,000 on some security guy to tell me I'm losing $5,000 worth of merchandise, you're crazy."    

As demand for neon waned in the late 1960s, LaSalle produced a growing number of acrylic panel signs lit by off-the-shelf fluorescent tubes. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)

An interesting evolutionary study can be made between LaSalle's signs for Gray's Papaya, installed in 1972, and those made for the Papaya King eight years earlier.  In those few years, porcelain enamel sign faces and neon illumination made way for plexiglas, aluminum and standard fluorescents.  But hand-drawn, original lettering had not yet yielded to computer-generated fonts. The Gray's Papaya signs have been slightly altered over the years, but their inventive lettering remains intact today. 

Signs for Gray's Papaya, 2090 Broadway (at West 72nd Street) in Manhattan, around the time of their installation in 1972.  (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)

As any New York signman will attest, one meets all sorts of characters in the neon business.  Mr. Langsner recalls checking on a job at one of the Char Broiled Flame Steak joints around Times Square, circa 1971.  "These two men came in dressed as women - big husky black guys - and asked to use the ladies room," he remembers.  "The owner told them no way, so they pulled out a knife and said he'd better let them use the bathroom.  The owner ran behind the counter and picked up a meat cleaver.  There they were, right in the middle of the lunch hour, it looked like they were gonna kill each other."  The episode was a snapshot in a period of transition - a sign of the times, one might say.  As luck would have it, a pair of cops showed up (to get lunch) and managed to broker a peace settlement before things got out of hand.  In the neon city, never a dull moment.

Char Broiled Flame Steaks, on Broadway just above Times Square, c. 1970. (Justin Langsner / LaSalle Sign Corp.)  

MANY THANKS to Justin Langsner for the photos and anecdotes in this post, and to Robbie and Gasper Ingui of Artistic Neon for helping to put us in touch. Be on the lookout for another post down the road tracing the history of LaSalle Signs.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• From JVNY: Has Manganaro's closed?

• Word by way of an e-mail from Kyle S. that Walter's Hardware in Astoria has closed, leaving its tubeless neon sign at risk.

• A celebration of New York's vernacular lettering, also by way of JVNY.

Sign Safari: Cross Bay Boulevard

On a recent Sunday before Thanksgiving I ventured out to a far away place I'd never really been before: Howard Beach.  Since December 2003 this place-name has been familiar to many as the southern terminus of the AirTrain serving JFK International Airport.  My accomplice and I, however, came for the neon.  So while most of our fellow disembarkees wheeled their suitcases off the A train and headed for the tarmac, we turned and headed toward Cross Bay Boulevard.


New Park Pizza, installed c. 1960. (T. Rinaldi) 

Joe Kunkel of Franklin Neon had tipped me off to three old signs here that he thought I'd like to see.  Joe thought right.  The short hike from the A train brought us first to New Park Pizza, at 156-71 Cross Bay Boulevard.  New Park has occupied this corner since 1956.   Its wonderful neon sign, I was excited to discover, is the work of the LaSalle Sign Corp. of Brooklyn, whose surviving works include the Papaya King sign at 86th and 3rd in Manhattan.  "Pizza pie is original," I am told by Justin Langsner, LaSalle's third-generation proprietor, of the big pizza pie with flashing plumes of steam at center.

LaSalle's other surviving works include the Papaya King sign on Manhattan's Upper East Side.  (T. Rinaldi)

New Park has the unfortunate distinction of having been the scene of the tragic hate crime that put Howard Beach on the map back in December 1986 - 25 years ago this month.  (Long story short: a racially-motivated scuffle between patrons resulted in the death of a 23-year-old black man, prompting a period of heightened racial tension throughout the city.)  The incident is recalled in director Spike Lee's 1989 film Do The Right Thing.  The film's dramatic climax takes place in the glow of a fictitious neon sign heralding Sal's Famous Pizza – a subtle reference, perhaps, to the New Park (though the sign in the movie bears a distinct resemblance to that of the V&T Pizzeria by Columbia University in Manhattan).   

Neon sign over Sal's Famous figured prominently in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. (T. Rinaldi)

The bad business of '86 is but a distant memory at the New Park today.  Maybe it was just my state of feverish hunger after a day spent gallivanting amid the ruinous splendor of the nearby Bayside Acacia cemetery, but I found the pizza at New Park to be exceptionally pleasurable. 

New Park Pizza. (T. Rinaldi)


Sufficiently fortified, we saddled up for the short march over to our next destination, the fabulous Lenny's Clam Bar.  Some readers may remember Lenny's for its charming televised advertisements that graced the late-night airwaves throughout the tri-state area back in the 1980s. Lenny's is easy to find, thanks to a force-multiplying assemblage of neon signs that make its presence known up and down the boulevard. The joint was jumping, valets busy shunting shiny cars in and out of the little parking lot next-door. I suggested a glass of wine at the bar, but my traveling companion complained of a late-onset hangover (5pm).  We decided to come back on a quieter night.

Full-tilt neon at Lenny's Clam Bar.  (T. Rinaldi)

From there it was on to the other Lenny's of Howard Beach: Lenny's Pizza, at 164-02 Cross Bay.  I had hoped to report on a New Park-versus-Lenny's taste test challenge; sadly, this was not to be, as Lenny's burned down just a few weeks before our visit.  We found the windows boarded, signs dark. Of the signs, there are two: one older, facing the side street, and a more recent number fronting the boulevard.  The newer (and I suspect the older) is (are) the work of Super Neon of Bensonhurst.  The good news is that both signs have survived the fire intact and will hopefully live to glow another night.  Meantime, we concluded our Howard Beach neon safari with some unfinished business on Cross Bay Boulevard.  

Get well soon, Lenny's Pizza!  (T. Rinaldi)

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• Cambridge Liquors' great vertical sign on 39^th and 8^th in Manhattan glows anew.

• Casa Oliveira Liquors' 80-year-old swing sign in Greenwich Village is wearing a new coat of paint.

• Mayfair Chemists' relic sign has vanished from Seventh Avenue South.

• Thanks to Project Neon for a great lecture at LandmarkWest! this Monday.