"Union Made"

A subtle decal can be found pasted inconspicuously onto the sheet metal faces of many old neon signs in New York.  It is a small rectangle, maybe one inch across and three inches high, bearing the letters “U-M” with a tiny numeral in between.  Photographing the signs at night, I didn’t notice these little guys at first.  Even once they caught my eye, the U-M stickers didn’t really grab my curiosity.  Finally it dawned on me that there might be something to these.  I began to ask around.

This maker of this fantastic relic sign on 6th Avenue in Manhattan can be identified only as "union sign shop no. 14." (T. Rinaldi)

Remarkably, everyone I talked to in the neon business was as mystified as I was as to the meaning of these decals.  Even second generation veterans of the New York sign business just shrugged their shoulders.  It took months before I finally found someone who confirmed what I had begun to suspect:  U-M = "Union Made" or "Union Manufactured."  Not all sign shops used the stickers, but they can be found on many signs made from the late 1940s up through the 1970s. But what about the little numeric code between the letters?  It took a while longer to get an answer for that one.

"Union Made" decals on old neon signs around New York. (T. Rinaldi)  

Labor unions have played a prominent role in New York’s electric sign business since at least the 1930s.  Just about every neon shop of any size in the city employed union labor by the postwar years.  And the staff at a typical New York shop would include members of not one, not two but three unions: Local 230 of the the Sign Pictorial & Display Union, Local 137 of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association and Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
  

Display advertisements from old Manhattan telephone directories. (N-YHS)

It turns out that the numeric codes between the U and the M correlate to various sign companies.  Suddenly, these little stickers took on a huge significance - If I could figure out which number indicated which sign shop, I could identify the makers of every sign that had one of these labels!  Problem is, the Rosetta Stone keying the U-M numbers to their respective shops has yet to turn up.  And many of the numbers have become too faded to read even with binoculars.  For now, all I can say is that the great old P&G Bar sign and the J. Braun Liquor Store sign are both the work of shop no. 17, and shop no. 11 made both the Olympia Florist sign in Hamilton Heights and the S.M. Rose Chevrolet sign on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Does anyone out there know more?  Meantime, I have thrown together this handy list of signs organized by their U-M codes.

Project Neon Show

Anyone reading this has surely already heard about Kirsten Hively and Project Neon, but, just in case you missed it - stop by her show opening tonight (Friday Sept 23, 2011) at the City Reliquary! 

http://projectneon.tumblr.com/

http://www.cityreliquary.org/

Railway Bar

My apologies for the month of “radio silence” on this blog.  My energies have gone toward edits to the neon book, which is now back at the publisher for another go-around. 

I thought I’d break the silence with a little tribute to a sign I never got to see (at least I don't remember it): that of the Railway Bar, which stood on 8th Avenue just below Penn Station.  I came across this while surfing through the archive of NYC tax photos taken in 1980, housed at the Municipal Archives.  What can I say, love at first sight.  This looks like a place for people who knew how to have a good time.

Municipal Archives

The Railway Bar is long gone now – a Google search turns up almost nothing, nada, bupkis, zippo.  The only other trace I could find was in one of Matt Weber’s great photo-montages of New York neon from days past.  A liquor store occupies the space now (thankfully it’s not a Starbucks or an ATM depot, though that’s probably a matter of time). 

The former Railway Bar today.

The photos show that the sign had red tubes in stainless steel channel letters set against a backdrop of green porcelain enamel, with nice stainless steel stripe moldings to each side.  Records at the DOB suggest an installation date in 1947.
















Sign montage by Matt Weber, showing the Railway Bar at 2nd row center, just below Small's.  All but two of the signs pictured here have vanished.

There is still a nice amount of tenderloin grit on this stretch of 8th Avenue, which I enjoy any time I make the schlep between my apartment and Penn Station.   Some good neon survives here, too.  The Penn Bar & Grill on the corner of 31st and 8th made way for Brother Jimmy’s a number of years back, but the new place did a good turn and installed a decent neon sign in place of the old one.

The Blarney Stone and D'Aiuto Pastry Shop.

Just down the street, the 8th Avenue Blarney Stone still has a great sign, even if the bar inside looks nothing like it did in the old days.  And over across the street there’s still D’Aiuto, whose sign went up in the days when you could have grabbed a snack here and caught the Broadway Limited to Chicago in the late, great Pennsylvania Station.

Choo-choo and RIP, Railway Bar!  If anyone has any memories of this place, feel free to drop me a line.

Nice deco brickwork on the facade of the ex-Railway Bar.

Salzman Sign Co.

Scattered around New York, a handful of old neon signs bear the maker’s mark of the Salzman Sign Co.   There is no way to know how many signs Salzman produced over the years – possibly thousands.  Today the company is gone, but not without a trace.  My research has turned up very little on Salzman, but from the work it left behind, it is clear that this was one of New York’s most important neon sign makers for much of the 20th century.

Manufacturer's plaques mark the work of the Salzman Sign Co.  (T. Rinaldi)

Nathan Salzman came to the United States from Russia just before the First World War, around the time of his 20th birthday.  He identified himself as a “sign writer” in the 1920 census.  By 1930 he had established his own shop.  He partnered briefly with Sam Langsner to form the La Salle Sign Corp. in the mid-1930s, but set off on his own again, opening the Salzman Sign Co. a few years later.  In 1940, Salzman advertised “over 25 years” in the sign business.  The company set up shop at 1001 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.  It remained listed in the yellow pages through the late 1970s. 

Salzman advertised as having been "in the sign business over 25 years" in this display ad placed in the Manhattan telephone directory in 1940.  (N-YHS)

Examples of the company’s work can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens today.  The signs are made from durable materials – porcelain enamel and stainless steel, the sign industry’s sheet metals of choice before anodized aluminum became widely available in the 1960s.  The designer(s) of these signs demonstrated a talent for juxtaposing handsome letter styles.  Some of the signs have been dark for years.  But most will come aglow tonight, doing the work for which they were intended 50 or 60 years ago.

The oldest of Salzman’s surviving neon signs is likely that of Roebling Liquors, on Roebling St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Records at New York’s Department of Buildings (DOB) indicate an installation date of 1945.  The sign sports inventive stainless steel details.  The store and its sign narrowly avoided being wiped off the map for the construction of the neighboring Williams Plaza houses in the early 1960s. 

Roebling Liquors on Roebling Street, just off the J-M-Z trains in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  (T.Rinaldi)

Vertical “prism” signs were very popular in New York in the 1950s and 60s, and at least three Salzman-made examples of these signs survive today.  One on Fulton Street in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn recalls a long-defunct business called Lincoln Credit (installed c.1950).   Over in Gravesend, another Salzman vertical sign (c. 1959) marks the spot of the Coney Island Bialy Bakery, still going strong at 2359 Coney Island Ave.  In Manhattan, a similar sign (c. 1953) hangs over the storefront of the Alleva Dairy on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. 

Three vertical signs by Salzman, in Brooklyn and Manhattan.  (T.Rinaldi)

Surviving fascia signs (parallel to the facade) by Salzman are more expressive.  On Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a ghost sign (c. 1950) advertises Auto-Lite “Sta-Ful” batteries.   On Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, another Salzman sign (c. 1952) heralds J. Josephs Sons Co., dealers in home furnishings and appliances.  This storefront is still very much alive and well.  The sign has lost its neon tubes, but its distinctive black and orange porcelain enamel face still looks almost as good as the day it was installed.  To the north, the fascia sign of Walter’s Hardware (c. 1955) on Broadway in Astoria, Queens, has also lost its neon tubes, but retains its stainless steel channel letters and trim.  Perhaps a good restoration lies in store.

Three fascia signs by Salzman, in Brooklyn and Queens.  (N-YHS)

One Salzman sign that has received a top quality restoration is that of Gringer’s Appliances (installed 1953), on First Avenue near Houston Street in Manhattan.  As the J. Josephs sign once did, Gringer’s sports a neon iteration (actually a pair) of General Electric’s signature logotype.  This sign was very nicely refurbished by Let There Be Neon in 2007.  

Gringer's neon sign has been a beacon of home appliance retailing for nearly sixty years.  (T.Rinaldi)

Salzman’s best known sign, and surely one of the most noteworthy installations of storefront neon ever created in New York, is the great wrap-around fascia display at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, installed c. 1960.    Boasting an array of fluorescent colors and appealing typefaces, this is Salzman’s tour-de-force.  Perish the thought of Surf Avenue without this sign: a finer specimen of vintage neon exists nowhere in the five boroughs today.

Nathan's Famous, on Surf Avenue in Coney Island.  (T.Rinaldi)

For all he left behind, questions remain about Mr. Salzman and his signs.  Did he design these installations himself?  Or are they the work of one or more layout men on his payroll?   Did he or his layout designers receive any formal training?  Or did they learn their craft by apprenticeship?  Like so many of New York’s great sign makers, Salzman’s lasting impact on the appearance of the city goes largely without attribution.

If you know anything about the Salzman Sign Co., please drop me a line!

  

Postcards from Chinatown

With the recent disappearance of the pair of neon signs that once hung over the defunct Jade Mountain restaurant on Second Avenue, one of the great typologies of old neon – Chinese restaurant signs – is poised for complete extinction, at least within the five boroughs. 

Last of its kind: the old CHOW MEIN sign at Jade Mountain dated to 1960.  It was made by the Laster Neon Engineering Co.  (T. Rinaldi)

For whatever reason, proprietors of Chinese restaurants have had an especially intense love affair with electric signs going back even before the advent of neon.  A writer in 1922 commented on two chop suey restaurants on 42nd Street whose extravagant signs stirred impassioned cries for anti-sign ordinances.  Joseph Mitchell wrote of a “galaxy of neon signs” in Chinatown in 1940. 

Old Postcards show Chinatown alight in neon.  (T. Rinaldi)


By the 1920s, electric signs peddling CHOP SUEY and CHOW MEIN became fixtures of the urban landscape in New York and other American cities.  (These dishes each have interesting cultural histories of their own.)   Edward Hopper immortalized this phenomenon in his 1929 painting Chop Suey.  Historians often write of the “neon sign” in this painting; in fact Hopper depicts a sign lit by exposed incandescent bulbs.  At the time Hopper painted this, incandescent bulb signs were rapidly disappearing to make way for new neon signs.  An exposed bulb sign in 1929 would have represented something tired and obsolete, on the brink of extinction – perfectly in step with Hopper’s visual iconography.
 

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey, 1929. (Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth)

American sign painters developed distinctive letterforms for Chop Suey joints and other Chinese-themed enterprises, using Roman characters styled after different iterations of East Asian calligraphy.  This practice began in the days of simple hand-painted signs, and was adapted for electric signs by the 1920s.  In the following decade, neon proved particularly well suited for such stylized alphabets.  These letterforms also turned up in applications such as title sequence graphics and lobby cards for various Asian-themed films, from Charlie Chan serials to the 1947 film Singapore starring Ava Gardner and Fred MacMurray. (For the real low-down on this subject, see this superb essay by Paul Shaw.)

Sign design suggestions, from a booklet published c. 1923 by the Reynolds Electric Co. (Signs of the Times)

Sign painter extraordinaire Alf Becker created these alphabets styled after East Asian calligraphy.  “American Orient” (left) ran in the October, 1934 issue of Signs of the Times, and appeared in Becker’s One Hundred Alphabets, published in 1941.  “Oriental” ran in the July, 1953 issue of Signs of the Times. (Signs of the Times)

The special affinity for neon signs among proprietors of Chinese restaurants yielded some of New York’s most distinctive storefronts of the mid-century decades.  Sadly, virtually none of these survive today. Like other businesses, many Chinese restaurants turned away from neon signs after the 1960s, replacing them with back-lit acrylic panel signs and vinyl awnings.  Neon window signs remain common among these businesses, but the flamboyant and distinctive outdoor signs that were such a signature feature of these establishments before the 1960s have nearly all vanished.  Old CHOW MEIN and CHOP SUEY signs of the kind depicted by Hopper were mostly long-gone by the time 8-tracks came out. 



 

The Port Arthur, formerly on Mott Street in Chinatown.  (William Chu / jpgmag.com)

Until recently, an especially evocative relic sign remained in place on the façade of the old Harlem Renaissance Ballroom building, on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 138th Street.  The small, three-sided marquee dated to 1937.  Abandoned along with the rest of the ballroom complex for 30 years or more, it seems to have finally succumbed during the building’s partial demolition in 2010. 

An unknown sign company installed this painted sheet metal awning on the façade of Harlem’s Renaissance Ballroom in 1937.  (T. Rinaldi)

Two other signs survive in Brooklyn.  Like the Renaissance Ballroom marquee, both of these are relics, having long outlived the businesses they once advertised.  One recalls a vanished chop suey joint that once did business on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  The other marks the spot of a defunct establishment called the Wu Han, on Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville. 

Relic signs from long vanished Chinese establishments on Nostrand Avenue (left; Royal Neon Sign Co., c. 1953) and on Pitkin Avenue (right; Cornell Neon Sign Co., c. 1950) are probably the last of their kind in New York. (T. Rinaldi)

With the disappearance of the Jade Mountain sign, these are possibly the last examples of mid-century Chinese-themed neon that remain in-situ in New York today.  Even in their forlorn state, both are museum quality treasures of commercial archeology.  But time is not on their side.  Hopefully a good home will find them before they go the way of untold hoards of signs like the one that caught Edward Hopper’s eye back in 1929, leaving only postcards from Chinatown to recall that they were ever here.



 

Sketch of Jade Mountain’s CHOW MEIN sign that accompanied the buildings department application for its installation in 1960. (NYC Dept. of Buildings)



New York’s Oldest Neon Sign

I had been photographing old neon signs around the city for a year or so when one day a troubling thought crossed my mind:  what if someone asked me to point out New York’s oldest neon sign?  I decided I’d better have a good answer.  Two years later, I’m still waiting for someone to pop the question.  Which is lucky for me, because two years later I still don’t have a good answer.   In theory, records at the NYC Department of Buildings should be able to clear this up.  But these are spotty and difficult to access, so we’ll probably never know for sure which is truly New York’s oldest existing neon sign.

Nonetheless, I have narrowed the pool down to a small handful of contenders, one of which we can be pretty certain holds the title for New York’s oldest.  These signs have demonstrated an incredible tenacity:  each has been in use for more than eight decades, a feat that never ceases to amaze me.  New York’s first neon sign appeared in 1924 (more on that in a later post); it is remarkable to think that these survivors appeared just a few years later.

The oldest sign whose installation date I have yet confirmed is the large neon fascia display on the façade of the Loew’s Paradise Theatre on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.  The theater opened on September 7, 1929, and the sign is original to its construction.  It is likely the work of Strauss &  Co., Inc. predecessor of the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corp., which had a contract with Loews to install and service signs for their New York-area theaters.



The Loew's Paradise in the Bronx,
then (1930) and now.  (flickr/Brad Smith; T. Rinaldi)









There are a handful of old signs for which I could find no documentation, but which are likely as old or older than the Loew’s Paradise display.   Techniques and popular taste in sign making changed so quickly in the 1920s and 30s that one can often guess a sign’s date of fabrication within a few years’ based on design details such as moldings, typeface or silhouette.

Until a few years ago, one contender hung on that gritty stretch of Eighth Avenue near the corner of 46th Street:  the neon emblazoned disk of Collins Bar most likely dated from around the year 1930.  With its fantastic typeface and delicate border molding, it was so picture perfect I was sure it had to have been salvaged from somewhere else and installed here later on as a gesture of retro-chic.  But the city’s tax photo proves that it had been in place at this location since at least 1950.  It disappeared around 2007 as the building’s tenants were forced to move out to make way for new construction on the site.  Here’s hoping it found a good home somewhere.



Collins Bar, formerly at 46th and 8th. (T. Rinaldi)



Further down Eighth Avenue in Chelsea hangs the sign of the Spruce Florist.  The city’s tax photo shows it hanging above this storefront as early as 1940, but its style suggests it had already been here for at least a few years by then.  Its tubes are missing from one side and the other hasn’t been lit in years.  It's due for a good refurbishment.



Spruce Florist, on 8th Avenue in Chelsea. (T. Rinaldi)



Across town, the fragmentary remains of the Orpheum Theatre’s neon marquee cast a warm glow over the east side of Second Avenue near St. Mark's Place.  Only one of the marquee’s three faces remains in place.  For some years its neon tubes were missing, but happily the management had them re-fabricated and the sign glows anew today.  It boasts a particularly handsome typeface.

The Orpheum on 2nd Avenue. (T. Rinaldi)



Far away in Coney Island, Nathan’s Famous offers what is certainly the city’s most impressive display of old neon today.  Most of the signs at Nathan’s date to c. 1960. But the vertical sign is older, a product of the early 1930s or before.  Like the sign that once hung over Collins Bar, it features a stamped sheet metal border molding typical for that period.  Its distinctive shape and raised metal letters are also representative of the era.



Nathan's Famous.  Border molding and distinctive shape 

typical for signs of the late '20s and early '30s. (T. Rinaldi)









  

Just around the corner from Nathan’s, the Wonder Wheel is similarly festooned in a barrage of classic neon.  Like Nathan’s, most of the Wonder Wheel’s signs are of midcentury vintage.  The oldest stands modestly beneath the wheel off to one side.  Walker Evans photographed this sign in 1929 or 1930, making it at least 81 years old, and it could be older still.



Wonder Wheel sign, photographed by Walker Evans

c. 1929 (left) and by me in July 2011 (right).  A refresh-
ment stand now occupies Evans' original vantage point.
(Walker Evans First & Last; T. Rinaldi)



For now at least, the true identity of New York’s oldest neon sign remains unknown, like Jimmy Hoffa’s final resting place, Captain Kidd’s treasure, the Maltese Falcon and those missing 18 minutes of Watergate tape.  Somehow, it seems appropriate.

G. Cardarelli, Fine Furniture

On West Houston Street, one of my favorite neon relics goes largely un-noticed in the shadow of the great neon marquee of the Film Forum.  At first glance, it’s not much to look at.  Give it another look and your keen eye will pick out the sign’s telltale streamlined silhouette and sheet metal box construction that give away its neon origins. 



 

Neon archeology on Houston Street. (T. Rinaldi)



Somewhere along the way someone removed its neon tubes and installed crudely re-lettered panels over the sign’s original faces.  Intrigued, I decided to look into the matter on one of my visits to the Municipal Archives down on Chambers Street.   Sign sleuthing in the city records is a hit-or-miss affair.  Lucky for me, the microfilm gods must have been smiling the day I went to look up this bit of commercial archeology.  

Distinctive silhouette, sculpted in sheet metal. (T. Rinaldi)

 

The city’s circa-1940 tax photo shows this sign in its original livery, advertising the wares of G. Cardarelli & Co., purveyors of “fine furniture”.  The sign went up a few years earlier, in 1936.  There the trail goes cold:  the old DOB (Department of Buildings) docket book reveals the year the sign went up, but sheds no light on its fabricator.  For the time being, its design remains unattributed.

The G. Cardarelli sign as it appeared c. 1940. (Municipal Archives)

As for Cardarelli, a Google search turns up a 1991 blurb in New York Magazine that dates the store’s genesis to 1900.  A piece in the New York Times from around the same time identifies the company’s founder as a certain Gaetano Cardarelli.  In 1936, when the sign went up, the business was under the direction of one Henry Cardarelli, perhaps the founder’s son. 

Shades of the old Cardarelli sign can be seen today at C.O. Bigelow on 6th Avenue, installed c. 1938.  Could they have been the work of the same sign shop?  (Municipal Archives; T. Rinaldi)

By 1994, they were gone.  Today 205 West Houston Street is home to United Protective Alarm Systems, whose services this 75-year old sign advertises now.  Maybe one day United will give the old girl a nice refurbishment, with letters better tailored for the sign’s handsome shape – and some neon tubes to boot.

A sketch showing how the old Cardarelli sign might look like restored.  (T. Rinaldi)