Da-Nite Neon Signs

One of the more nagging frustrations of researching the neon book was how little information I managed to find on Da-Nite (pronounced "day-night") Neon Signs.  Despite being one of New York's most prominent illuminated sign shops for more than fifty years, I have thus far come up with almost nothing on this company.  A similarly-named Da-Nite Sign Co. has operated in Columbus, Ohio since 1954, but a nice young woman who answered the phone there assured me that the two firms are of no relation.

"Sign Architects since 1915," "Manufacturers of Brilliant Neon as Used at the World's Fair," and "The Finest Neon Showroom in New York."   Da-Nite display advertisements from the Manhattan Classified Telephone Directory, from top - 1935, 1950 and 1960. (NYPL, N-YHS)

Based on Da-Nite Neon's classified advertisements in the Manhattan yellow pages, one gathers that the company operated from 1915 to the mid-1970s.  Neon signs themselves didn't show up in New York until the 1920s, leaving one to wonder what the firm might have called itself in its earlier years.  After 1965 it seems to have changed its name to "Day & Nite Neon Signs". Its distinctive advertisements began to appear in the phone book by the early 1930s, and remained there complete with the company's very deco-style lettering for the next forty years. 

Da-Nite's mark at 79th Street Wine and Spirits. (T. Rinaldi)

At least two Da-Nite signs can still be found in Manhattan, both on the west side.  If these examples are any indication, the firm's body of work must have been very impressive indeed.  79th Street Wine and Spirits, at 230 West 79th Street, retains simple but handsome vertical and fascia signs once typical of midcentury liquor stores throughout the city.  Only the vertical sign bears Da-Nite's marking, but the two signs are very well matched, suggesting the same provenance for both.  


79th Street Wine & Spirits.  I especially enjoy the "Q" in "LIQUOR" on the fascia sign. (T. Rinaldi)

Records at the Building Department fail to indicate an installation date, but their style implies something from the Truman administration. The ensemble is complemented by the older blinking sign of the Dublin House bar across the street, making the corner of 79th and Broadway one of the most memorable in the city – at least for the neon aficionado. 

79th Street Wine & Spirits.  (T. Rinaldi)

A still more pleasing bit of Da-Nite's handiwork can be found on Eighth Avenue and 44th Street, at Smith's Bar and Restaurant.


Smith's Bar and Restaurant, 701 Eighth Avenue. (T. Rinaldi)

This especially appealing set of signs served as the backdrop for my recent interview on WNBC's "The Debrief with David Ushery."  The signs were installed in 1954.  22 years later they enjoyed a brief cameo in the closing credits of Martin Scorsese's 1976 film "Taxi Driver."

Smith's Bar looks much the same today (above) as it did more than 30 years ago in "Taxi Driver."  (NBC Universal; "Taxi Driver")

The Smith's Bar signs are painted black now, but until recently their sheet metal remained in its original unpainted glory, though the aluminum (?) sign faces had begun to look a little worse for wear.  Vacant electrode housings within the letters BAR indicate that these once enjoyed an additional set of tubes.

  

Smith's Bar, before (above) and after (below) the paint job. (T. Rinaldi)

For the past year or so, the lettering BAR and RESTAURANT has flashed on-and-off in alternating sequence.  Probably not many passersby wonder, as I do, whether the sign flashed originally or if this new blinking act simply recalls a flashier era in New York neon.  This is a secret Da-Nite seems to have taken to the grave.


  
Schematic sketches of the Smith's Bar signs accompanied their original permit application at the Department of Buildings in 1954. (New York City Department of Buildings)

SEE ALSO:
• Da-Nite Neon at nyneon.org.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• At the Lost City blog, parsing out the history of the Hotel Roger Smith (one of NYC's last hotels neon).
• By way of John Anderson at Mega Volt Neon, an almost hypnotic Parisian apocathary sign.

Allen and The White Horse

One of the most recognizable signs in New York is the work of a particularly obscure sign company.  The modest neon sign of the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street seems to be the lone surviving installation of the Allen Sign Company of Manhattan.  

The White Horse Tavern, at 567 Hudson Street, Manhattan. January 7, 2007. (T. Rinaldi)

Detail showing the mark of the Allen Sign Co., emblazoned on the sign's porcelain enamel faces.  (T. Rinaldi)

I know of no other surviving works by Allen, and have come across no other details on the firm - almost.  By some good fortune, I ran across a passing reference to the company in the December 1946 issue of Signs of the Times magazine, which names the firm's proprietors as Al (Allen?) and Sidney Rosenbloom, "both formerly with Claude Neon Lights in New York."  Claude, of course, was the veritable mothership of neon shops, having launched the commercial neon trade first in Paris before World War I and then in New York in 1924.  The blurb mentions another of Allen's works, a long-vanished vertical sign for the Manhattan Towers Hotel on the Upper West Side, which at 67 feet high was said to be the "tallest sign north of Times Square." 

Display ad from the 1950 Manhattan Classified Telephone Directory. (NYPL)

With the owner's names in hand, I then consulted the 1930 U.S. Census to see what I could turn up on the Rosenblooms.  Al Rosenbloom proves elusive: of several persons by that name, none can be clearly identified as the future proprietor of the Allen Sign Co.  Sidney, however, turns up living in Laurelton, Queens, age 34, his occupation listed as "Salesman – Sign" some fifteen years before the Signs of the Times blurb.  The Allen Sign Company appears in the Manhattan yellow pages from about 1945 through the mid-1970s, then vanishes.

  

Signs of the Times, December 1946.  (Signs of the Times, used with permission)

Today, the last surviving work of the Allen Sign Company may be this solitary sign that has hung over the door of the famed White Horse Tavern since 1946.  According to Jef Klein's History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York, the tavern itself began life in 1880 - it had already been around 64 years when its owners decided to go neon.  In the 1950s, the White Horse became known as a haunt for some of Greenwich Village's better known bohemians, lending the place the legendary status it enjoys to this day.

White Horse aglow, November 19, 2010. (T. Rinaldi)

The bohemians are mostly gone now, but the sign that beckoned them remains.  Its blackletter script and little white horse head reference the ye-old-pub signs of Great Britain.  For the color scheme, the Rosenblooms went for porcelain enamel sign faces with white lettering and border trim over a solid blue background, a standard palette more commonly used for wayfinding signs of the porcelain enamel era than for neon storefront displays.  The lettering glows in simple red neon, with fluorescent white for the horse (of course).

White Horse in the window, November 19, 2010. (T. Rinaldi)

As fine a work as it indubitably is, the White Horse sign likely owes its prominence to the notoriety of the tavern beneath it as much as to its own charm.  Even so, if the winds of attrition have carried off all but this one example of the Rosenbloom's handiwork, the Allen Sign Company can still lay claim to one of New York's finest old signs.  The Rosenbloom boys did good.

Outtakes from evening photoshoots at the White Horse on November 19 and December 21, 2010.  (T. Rinaldi)

Please drop me a line if you know anything more about the Allen Sign Company.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• An exciting update on the Beatrice Inn sign restoration, at JVNY.

Globe Neon Sign Co.

No backward glance at New York's heritage of neon would be complete without paying tribute to the Globe Neon Sign Co. of the Bronx.  During its five decades of operation, Globe issued some of New York's finest storefront neon.  More than 35 years after the company disappeared, Globe signs can still be found in at least three of the five boroughs.

Display ad from the 1960 Manhattan yellow pages. (New-York Historical Society)

Like most neon shops of its stature in New York, Globe vanished with little record of its origins.  Known variously through the years as the Globe Sign Co., Globe Neon Tube Corp., Globe Neon Signs, the Globe Sign Co., Globe Signs and finally as the Globe Sign Corp., the firm was established in 1924, the same year neon signs likely first appeared in New York.  Originally headquartered in Manhattan, by 1935 Globe set up shop in the south Bronx, where it remained at several addresses for the next forty years. Its prominent early works included the diabolically appealing vertical sign of the evocatively named Barrel Of Fun nightclub on West 51st Street, which appeared in a lesser-known photograph by Andreas Feininger.

 

 

An early sign by Globe for a Columbus Avenue eatery, c. 1934 (top).  The Barrell of Fun, at 133 West 51st Street, installed c. 1935 (middle).  Dynamic Appliances, 65th Street and Broadway, installed c. 1950, featured an animated illumination sequence and scintillating incandescent bulbs (bottom). (Signs of the Times Magazine, Feb. 34, Apr. 35, Aug. 50, used with permission)

For most of its life, Globe was run by a legendary signman called David Cheifetz. Mention his name to any veteran of New York's neon business and you'll get a guffaw and an eye roll and the stories will start flowing.  "If you look up the word 'shyster' in the dictionary, his picture is the first thing you see," one former colleague told me.  A wily character, Cheifetz is said to have changed the legal spelling of his name to dodge a record number of unpaid parking tickets.  One story holds that he would spring unannounced "installation fees" on customers after unveiling their newly completed signs at his shop, effectively holding the signs for ransom until the client paid him to release the job for installation.  Another tale has it that he would wait for a new sign to pass its required city inspection and then substitute used transformers for the new ones that had just passed muster with the inspector.

Globe manufacturer's tags on signs at Catania Shoes in the Bronx (top) and at the former Weathervane Inn on East 29th Street in Manhattan. (T. Rinaldi)

Still, looking at the impressive body of work he left behind, one gets the sense that these stories may have evolved from friendly jibes at the expense of an indomitable personality as much as from actual deeds or misdeeds. "When he talked, his eyes blinked and his lips flapped a thousand times a minute," recalled Jack Saraceno of Lettera Signs in the Bronx, who worked under Cheifetz in the early 1970s.  If Cheifetz were alive today, he might answer his accusers simply by pointing to the significant number of his works that can still be found around the city.  Prominent surviving works by Globe include the inventive sign for the Carnegie Deli in Midtown, and the instantly recognizable sign for the Clover Delicatessen on Second Avenue and 34th Street. 

Clover Delicatessen, 621 Second Ave., Manhattan, installed 1956. (T. Rinaldi)

Cheifetz ran Globe through the early 1970s, when he retired and sold the company to an outfit called the Award Sign Co, thus ending Globe's 50-year run.  (Award was later bought out by the West Side Neon Sign Co. of the Bronx, which itself was swallowed up by Artkraft Strauss in 1988.)  What became of Cheifetz afterward is unclear.  Some say he retired to Florida.  Others say he lived into his 90s, investing in a number of Queens liquor stores near the end of his life.  For now, the details of his final disposition are as murky as those surrounding his entry to the sign business (perhaps someone out there knows more?).  But his mark on the city remains here to see, a legacy in light that comes aglow each evening when the sun goes down. 

Please drop me a line if you know anything more about Mr. Cheifetz or the Globe Neon Sign Co.

Catania's Shoe Shop (at 3015 Westchester Ave. in the Bronx.) boasts what is likely Globe's oldest surviving work, installed c. 1945. (T. Rinaldi)

V&T Italian Restaurant, 1024 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhttan, c. 1963. (T. Rinaldi)

Il Campanile Restaurant (ex-Weathervane Inn), 30 East 29th Street, Manhattan, installed c. 1960. This sign enjoys a split-second cameo in the opening minutes of the 1966 film Valley of the Dolls. (T. Rinaldi)

Lenox Liquors (ex-Paris Liquors), 100 West 124th Street, installed in 1959 (left), and Home of Cheers Liquor Store, 261 West 18th Street, Manhattan, installed c. 1960 (right). (T. Rinaldi)

The M&G Diner, 383 West 125th Street, Manhattan, installed c. 1966.  As at the Carnegie Deli, neon tubes installed over back-lit plexi sign faces.  The M&G closed in 2008 but the sign survived a few years longer, finally disappearing in 2011. (T. Rinaldi)

Cavalier Restaurant, 85-19 37th Avenue, Queens, installed c. 1960.  This sign featured what appears to be a wood grain porcelain enamel sign face, something I have seen nowhere else.  Both restaurant and sign went bye-bye in 2009. (T. Rinaldi)

Globe's best-known surviving work, at the Carnegie Delicatessen, 854 Seventh Ave., Manhattan, made c. 1960.  Like the M&G diner, this sign featured neon tubes mounted over a back-lit plexiglas fascia, making it a bit of a hybrid. (T. Rinaldi)

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• The final proofs are here for the neon book!  One more round of revisions and then that's it...

The Artkraft Files

No news is usually good news on this here New York Neon blog – my reports often have to do with some great old sign being pulled off a wall somewhere.  In fact, New York lost three lovely old neon signs in recent weeks.  But first, the good news: the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corp. papers are now available for researchers at the New York Public Library.

Original design drawings for the Howard Johnson's signs that held the corner of 46th and Broadway in Times Square from 1960 until about 1990, when they made way for replacement signs that finally vanished in 2006. (NYPL)

Artkraft Strauss was New York's preeminent maker of electric signs for most of the 20th century.  The company is known for having fabricated most of the blockbuster Times Square spectaculars erected between the 1930s and the 1990s.  But researchers will not find materials relating to Artkraft's Times Square mega-signs amongst the NYPL collection: the company sold these documents at auction in 2006 when it discontinued its sign fabrication and maintenance operations.

Correspondence from a HoJo staff architect dictating the color scheme for the Times Square signs. (NYPL)

Instead, the bulk of the files at the NYPL tell the story of Artkraft's more garden variety "on-premise" signs – theater marquees, roof signs for hotels and factories, and typical storefront signs.  In many ways, this body of work is more significant than the spectaculars, which are already well documented.

Before there was the Life Cafe, the Life Restaurant commissioned this design sketch for a sign that Artkraft may or may not have ever actually fabricated.  (NYPL)

The Artkraft Strauss papers at the NYPL offer representative examples of the what one might have found at typical sign shops in New York and elsewhere.  Better than any other resource I have found so far, these files tell the story of how the signs came to be.  All of the New York sign shops I've successfully contacted told me they discarded these materials long ago.  There are sketches and letters, formal design and shop drawings, maintenance contracts and photographs. 

Just in time for the neon book, these materials helped me solve a nice handful of little mysteries, for example:

YES!  The big Blumstein Department Store sign on 125th Street was the work of Artkraft Strauss, as I suspected.

Artkraft's sign for Blumstein Dept. Store sign lorded over 125th Street in Harlem from 1936 until it was covered over around 2008. (T. Rinaldi)

NO! The "Music Hall" copy on the Radio City marquees was not originally its present yellow, as implied by reports stating the sign was "restored"  to its original colors, but red, as I remember seeing it when I was a kid.

YES! Artkraft Strauss indeed made the enormous Silvercup Bakery sign in Long Island City, in 1961-62, and re-lettered part of the sign to its present Silvercup Studios configuration twenty years later.

Artkraft's original construction drawings for the Silvercup Bread sign in Long Island City (top), which survives today in slightly altered form (below). (NYPL; T. Rinaldi)

YES! The Loews Post Road Theater sign in the Bronx was among many Loews theater signs made by Artkraft throughout the New York area.

Original drawings for the Loew's Post Road Theatre signs, installed in 1939.  The vertical sign was later re-lettered when Loew's sold the theater, but remains in place today. (NYPL; T. Rinaldi)

YES! Artkraft also made the big Domino Sugar sign on the Williamsburg waterfront.

Drawings for Williamsburg's Domino Sugar spectacular (above) and the sign as it appears today (bottom).  This sign replaced an earlier display which stood atop the historic refinery building next door (at left in the photo).  (NYPL; T. Rinaldi)

HERE is a brief synopsis of the collection for anyone interested in visiting:

Artkraft Strauss donated the materials to the NYPL's Manuscripts and Archives Division between 2007 and 2010. The documents are nicely indexed in this finding aid, which is a searchable PDF. They are grouped into 4 sets or "series", including executive office files, management files, job files, and photographs. Of these, the highlight (for me anyway) was the "Job Files" (Series III), which is comprised mostly of manila folders each generally corresponding to a sign made by Artkraft Strauss. Some of the folders are pretty slim, holding say a single draft contract for a job that was never executed. Others are pay dirt, with design sketches, illustrative correspondence, and other materials that document the sign's whole production.

The collection can be viewed at the NYPL's Manuscripts and Archives Division, by appointment only. To make an appointment, researchers should fill out a short online application form. Manuscripts and Archives is located at the north end of the NYPL's main reading room on 42nd Street. The materials are grouped into boxes; researchers can request up to five boxes at a time, a maximum of three times a day (that means 15 boxes a day - click here to see the opening hours). Leave your Esterbrooks at home: it's pencils only here. Photocopies can be made by staff only – visitors must make a log of what they want copied.

MANY THANKS to Tal Nadan at the NYPL.

AND NOW, THE BAD NEWS:

• From the Lost City blog, the super wonderful old sign of the Crown Deli Caterers in Borough Park has vanished (as has the deli).  A pretty cool new sign has appeared to advertise the storefront's new occupant (not a bank or a Starbucks but an ice cream parlor), but one hopes the old sign found a good home somewhere.

• Also from Lost City, the lovely streamlined marquee of the old Earle/Eagle theater in Jackson Heights is gone.  This was one of the very last vintage movie theater marquees anywhere in New York.

• Finally, via Kyle in Astoria - Walter's Hardware has gone and now so too has their sign.