Shore Is Gone

For all their prominence as landmarks, old signs are frail and ephemeral things in the end.  Hurricane Sandy reminded us of this last week, the storm's long list of casualties including two of New York's best landmark signs.  

Lobster carnage at the City Island Lobster House, 691 Bridge Street in the Bronx.  (flickr.com/jaydensonbx) 

In the Bronx, Sandy reduced the big neon crustacean over the City Island Lobster House to a sad pile of twisted metal and broken glass.  Near as I could tell, the big lobster wasn't particularly old (it seems to have been added to an existing roof sign in the late 1990s).  Though not so much historic, the lobster endeared itself to many as one of New York's most iconic neon signs, and probably City Island's most recognized landmark, a true signature piece of this Bronx enclave community.  The Lobster House itself has fortunately survived the destruction and is up and running again.  Plans for a new neon lobster are in the works, I am told, though the new lobster will probably be somewhat scaled down from the old one, sadly.

The City Island Lobster House in better days. (Kirsten Hively / Project Neon)

Across the city, the art deco vertical sign of Coney Island's Shore Theatre was a Landmark legally as well as literally.  Post-storm photos of the carnage appeared Tuesday on Tricia Vita's Amusing The Zillion blog, showing the sign's mangled remains dangling over Surf Avenue from the historic theater's facade. 

Wreckage of the Shore Theatre's art deco vertical sign, installed c. 1939. (flickr.com/Timothy Krause) 

The sign was not quite as old as the theater, which opened as the Loew's Coney Island in 1925 with marquee and vertical signs lit by incandescent bulbs.  The original incandescent signs disappeared around 1939 to make way for a set of streamlined, neon-lit replacements, which included the just-destroyed vertical sign (the neon marquee was already gone).  These were likely produced by Artkraft Strauss, which did most of the work for New York-area Loews theaters by contract. 

The Shore Theatre sign was a Coney Island landmark.  (T. Rinaldi) 

Loew's seems to have employed a few standard designs for its theater signage over the years.  The Loew's Coney Island's vertical replacement sign had at least one identically styled sibling, over at the Loew's Oriental on 86th Street in Brooklyn.  The Oriental has lost its sign and marquee but still stands today (it's now a Marshall's).  The Loew's Coney Island meanwhile kept its sign, which was neatly re-lettered from LOEWS to SHORE when the theater changed hands and was re-named around 1964.  

The Loew's Oriental on 86th Street bore a twin replacement sign. (American Classic Images)

The sad irony is that this was one of very few neon signs in New York that enjoyed the protection of the city's Landmarks Commission (the theater was Landmarked in 2010).  Protected from man, but not from nature, it turns out.  Plans for the future of the long vacant theater are still formative, but here's hoping its Landmarked status will ensure at least a good facsimile, perhaps incorporating salvaged parts from the original.

All things considered, a few smashed up signs are the least of of the troubles still facing NYC's hard-hit low-lying areas, and the thousands still without power, heat and water more than a week after the storm.  Even some areas relatively unscathed are still without vital transit connections.  Here are some ways to help the many who are still in need:

• The Red Cross
• Volunteer Opportunities in Staten Island
• Occupy Sandy
• Lots of links at NYCService.org
• And more at WNYC

Hotel Neon: The Keller Hotel

Each time I pass by the old relic sign of the Keller Hotel, I almost have to convince myself it's the real thing.  That anything so ephemeral could survive on the radically transformed West Village waterfront seems incredible.  Where the once-bustling dockfronts degenerated into a post-industrial fantasy of seedy bars and abandoned piers backdropped by the rusting hulk of the West Side Highway, there are now luxury apartments girdled by the lush plantings of the Hudson River Park.  The change has been seismic, but this fragile relic remains. 

The Keller Hotel. (T. Rinaldi)

For me, the Keller's old sign is perhaps the single most evocative remnant of the waterfront's past life.  Its painted sheet metal has taken on an especially vivid patina, with faded hues of brown and beige that complement the old brick hotel from which it hangs.  Records at the Buildings Department indicate that the sign appeared here in 1933, the work of the Beacon Neon Sign Co of West Houston Street.  Its streamlined silhouette looks like an upside-down thermometer.  An angled neon arrow, gone now, once hung beneath it, pointing toward the hotel's entrance.

The Keller's sign may be the last surviving work of the Beacon Neon Sign Corp. (Manhattan Classified Telephone Directory, Fall-Winter 1931 / NYPL)

The building itself predates the sign, having begun life as the Hotel Knickerbocker in 1898.  When it opened, the Knickerbocker must have stood out as one of the more reputable hotels on this perennially gritty waterfront.  A modern, six-story building designed by the noted architect Julius Munkwitz, it contrasted sharply with the smaller, dingy flops that stood beside it.  

The Keller seen in 1929, at which time it operated as the Keller Abington.  (P.L. Sperr / NYPL)

Even in its heyday, the New York waterfront was a place most respectable people avoided except to board ferries or steamships.  This left a wide berth for bars, brothels and bawdy houses that catered to sailors and dock laborers, mostly single men.  One gets a sense for the scene in the 1928 film "The Docks of New York" (viewable in its entirety at YouTube). Set in the 1890s, the film partly takes place at a seedy saloon called the "Sand Bar", which had since been "wiped out by commerce and reform." 

Intertitle from the 1928 film "The Docks of New York".
 
The Sand Bar may have yielded to commerce and reform, but the waterfront generally resisted most attempts to clean it up.  As port traffic declined in the middle decades of the twentieth century, the once respectable Keller soon came to blend with the infamously disreputable hotels around it, eventually providing SRO housing for very low income persons.
  

(T. Rinaldi)

With the piers increasingly disused after World War II, the waterfront became even better suited as a refuge for various subcultures, particularly the city's emerging gay community.  The Keller's ground floor saloon is said to have become a gay bar as early as the late 1950s, anticipating many others that opened nearby in the ensuing decades.  In an age when homosexuality was considered about as far as one could get from mainstream mores, the Keller's old neon sign marked a portal into a world of "gross indecency".

1970s advertising for Keller's. (colorsofleather.com) 

The sign was still there in the '70s, by which time Keller's (as the bar became known) figured among a growing number of gay bars that clustered along the old waterfront.  Though more aboveboard than in previous decades, these establishments were typically somewhat less polished than the sashay-away gay bars of recent times.  A 1971 guidebook called "The Gay Insider: A Hunter's Guide to New York and a Thesaurus of Phallic Lore" described Keller's as "the oldest gay leather bar in town."   The internet provides a few spirited accounts of Keller's in the libertine years between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis (links below).  "When it was not so fashionable to be an out-of-the-closet homo-thug," recounts one, "Keller's was a place where men from the projects and their admirers could hang out on the 'down-low'."

The Keller sign, seen on May 7, 1940 (above) and on Sept. 19, 2009. (P.L. Sperr / NYPL; T. Rinaldi)

Keller's is empty now, "commerce and reform" having finally triumphed over the wayward ways of the waterfront.  The hotel shuttered around 1990, according to a 2006 story in the New York Times.  Work began on a (presumably luxury) residential conversion in 2004, but stalled soon after, leaving the hotel's old sign to linger on over the foot of Barrow Street. The place is now protected by the city's Landmarks Commission, which will hopefully help ensure that something good happens here, sign-wise at least. 

THIS IS THE FOURTH in a series of stories entitled "Hotel Neon," exploring the unique resonance of neon hotel signs in the American psyche. See also: 

• Hotel Neon, Part 3: The Cavalier Hotel

• Hotel Neon, Part 2: Hotel Neon
• Hotel Neon, Part 1: The Chelsea Hotel

MORE ON THE KELLER:

• The Landmarks Commission's incredibly thorough designation report on the Keller Hotel.
• NYT coverage of the Keller's recent suspended animation make-over: two stories, one from '06 and one from '08.  "The ghosts of the past breathe deeply here."
• Reminescences of fast times at Keller's, here, here, here, here, and here.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• Check out the new book Signs, Streets and Storefronts: A History of Architecture and Graphics Along America's Commercial Corridors, by Martin Treu.
• Via Project Neon - help save a landmark Roanoke, VA sign.

Long Island City

The recent installation of JetBlue's new roof sign over its LIC headquarters is a very slight return to glory for what could aptly be called the cradle of New York's neon industry.  LIC's sprawling wonderland of early 20th century industrial lofts has been home to some of the city's most important neon shops – including Claude Neon's original neon plant, opened in 1924.  And more visibly, for most of the 20th century, these buildings hosted New York's greatest concentration of rooftop spectaculars outside of Times Square. 

The new JetBlue sign presides over the Queensboro Plaza subway station. (T.Rinaldi)

Picture the view from an east-facing office in the Chrysler Building on a dusky midcentury evening.  The Long Island City skyline must have looked like a glowing garden of great roof signs, some beaming out steadily, others blinking in animated sequence, in a range of colors.  When some proposed removing the signs with the opening of the new United Nations headquarters across the East River in the late 1940s, the Queens Chamber of Commerce protested that "the signs serve a useful purpose to the manufacturers and merchants of Queens, and, as such, are quite necessary."   
 

Map showing locations of Long Island City roof signs, past and present. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

 
Ultimately, however, the anti-sign interests won out when the city enacted restrictive zoning in the 1960s that prevented the installation of large new roof signs.  One by one, almost all of the old signs disappeared, sometimes leaving just their massive empty steel framework behind. 

Empty steel skeletons remain like husks to mark the locations of Long Island City's bygone rooftop spectaculars.  (T.Rinaldi)

The JetBlue sign appeared here only after the airline worked with the Department of City Planning and the City Council to change the zoning regulations.  (The City Council eventually approved an amendment that allows large roof signs in a delineated area of Long Island City, with some caveats.)  Unlike the giant LED billboards that crowd over the Long Island Expressway like oversized flatscreen TVs, the JetBlue sign looks more like the signs that once typified the skyline here, with giant channel letters mounted to an open steel armature.  Though the new sign uses no neon (it's all LED), it is a stirring evocation of LIC's mostly-lost landmark spectaculars, some of which are memorialized here below. (See the map above for locations of the signs described in this post.)


1: PEPSI-COLA

(T.Rinaldi)

(Vera Lutter / Whitney)

Erected 1938 by Artkraft Strauss.  Refurbished 1997 by Artkraft Strauss.  Relocated to park after Pepsi bottling plant demolished 2004-2005.  Relocated again subsequently. 

2: SILVERCUP / 42-02 22nd Street

(T.Rinaldi)

Original construction drawings for the Silvercup sign are preserved in the Artkraft Strauss papers at the New York Public Library.  (NYPL)

Erected 1961-62 by Artkraft Strauss.  Originally lettered to read SILVERCUP BREAD.  Copy altered after building taken over by Silvercup Studios around 1982.  Tubes removed, sign floodlit at night.

3: EAGLE ELECTRIC / 23-10 Queens Plaza South

(Pamela Talese)

(T.Rinaldi)

Faced west toward Manhattan over vehicular ramps serving Queensboro Bridge and elevated subway trains, just behind the Silvercup sign.  A particularly memorable sign ("Perfection Is Not An Accident").  Steel framework now used for ordinary billboard.

4: PAN AM / 41-43 41st Ave.

(www.nycsubway.org / Doug Grotjahn / Testagrose Collection)

(T.Rinaldi)

Erected c. 1960 to face south-west over Queensboro Plaza.  A lesser-known sister to the famous sign over Pan Am's Park Avenue headquarters, erected around the same time.  Massive steel framework now empty.

5: LOCKHEED CONSTELLATION / 41-15 29th Street (?)

The Lockheed Constellation sign's animation sequence, re-created from a series of photos printed in Signs of the Times magazine in 1946.  (Signs of the Times, May 1946 / Used with permission)

The Chatham-Phenix building today. (T.Rinaldi)

Debuted March 9, 1946, "to hit automobile and limousine traffic to and from La Guardia Airport." Positioned over the Chatham-Phenix building facing west towards Manhattan.   Designed by Elwood Whitney of Foote, Cone & Belding, advertising agency for Lockheed; built by Continental Signs Inc. in connection with A.H. Villepigue, Inc.     Sign and framework gone.  (See Signs of the Times, May 1946).

6: MAGIC CHEF GAS RANGES / Queensboro Plaza

View east from the Queensboro Plaza subway station, with the Lockheed sign visible to the left of the clocktower, and the Magic Chef spectacular seen in the distance over the train.  (nycsubway.org / David Pirmann collection)

Faced east over Sunnyside Yards, visible to commuters on the IRT Flushing Subway (the 7 train) and the LIRR. Sign and framework gone.

7: APPLE TAG AND LABEL / 30-30 Northern Blvd.

Apple Tag and Label, looking towards Manhattan with the Ravenswood power plant beyond.  (T.Rinaldi)

Roof sign mounted to four sides of the plant's water tower, visible from LIRR and the Astoria subway.  Future uncertain as the warehouse below seems to be in the midst of a suspended conversion.


8: PIERCE-ARROW / 34-01 38th Ave.

(Period Paper / amazon.com)

An early 20th Century sign that sat atop the works of automaker Pierce-Arrow.  The sign is long gone but the building survives.

9: BREYERS ICE CREAM / 34-09 Queens Blvd.

The Breyers Ice Cream sign over Queens Boulevard. (nycsubway.org / Joe Testagrose Collection)

Remains of the Breyers sign today.  (T.Rinaldi)

Oddly shaped framework over the Manhattan-bound platform at the 33rd Street Station echoes the handsome leaf-shaped logo of Breyer's Ice Cream.  According to Fabulous Philly Foods: "The leaf logo was designed by Henry Breyer [founder William Breyer's son].  Most people think it's a mint leaf but really it's a briar-bush leaf."

10: PACKARD / 32-02 Queens Blvd.

(Signs of the Times magazine, Jan. 15, 1914, used with permission)

The Packard plant today.  (T.Rinaldi)

Erected c. 1910 by National Electric Sign Co.  Sign 100’ long with letters 24', 17' and 12' high, "visible for four miles".  As at Pierce-Arrow, the sign is gone but the building remains. (See Signs of the Times, Jan. 15, 1914.)

11: SWINGLINE STAPLES / 32-07 VanDam Street

(Signs of the Times Magazine, April 1952 / Used with permission)

(T. Rinaldi)

Unused steel armature over the CapitalOne bank sign recalls the giant Swingline Stapler that previously occupied this rooftop.  Swingline sign was built by Artkraft Strauss, around 1952. Original dimension 110' long by 58' high, featuring animated "stapling machine" 3600 times actual size. (See Signs of the Times, April 1952.) 

12: DENTYNE CHICLETS / 30-30 Thomson Ave.

(Greater Astoria Historical Society)

The old Adams Gum plant today, sans-signs.  (T. Rinaldi)

A tryptych of roof signs advertised products of the Adams Chewing Gum Co. from the roof of its plant on Thomson Ave., which is still one of LIC's more noteworthy industrial buildings (though Adams has long since decamped).  The center portion of the sign was updated to advertise Certs mints in later years, before all three signs vanished completely.

13: EVEREADY FLASHLIGHT & RADIO BATTERIES / 30-20 Thomson Ave.

(Signs of the Times magazine, Feb. 1928, used with permission)

A Claude Neon installation first illuminated on May 14, 1925, making it one of the first neon signs in the city.  (See Signs of the Times, February 1928.)


14: LOOSE-WILES SUNSHINE BISCUITS (ET.AL) / 
29-10 Thomson Ave.

The Sunshine Biscuits sign in its original configuration, c. 1914.  (Signs of the Times magazine, Nov. 1914, Used with permission)

Long Island City's ICDNY sign still uses Sunshine's original steel framework.  (T.Rinaldi)

"The tens of thousands of travelers on the busy highways and on the Long Island Railroad trains, as well as many residents of Manhattan, might easily wonder about the identity of this monster industrial building, if on the roof there did not appear an electric sign of unequaled proportions with the words, 'LOOSE-WILES SUNSHINE BISCUITS'" (See Signs of the Times, Nov. 1914). Built c. 1914 by the National Electric Sign Co with the George Patten Co.  Original dimensions 591 feet long, each letter 20 feet wide, lit with 3,928 ten-watt tungsten lamps.  Retrofitted with neon tubes by Rainbow Lights, Inc, 1926 (see Signs of the Times, October 1926).  Later re-lettered for Executone Intercoms after the mid-1950s.  Re-lettered again in 1985 when the building was made-over as the International Design Center New York, featuring the center's Massimo Vignelli-designed IDCNY logo.

15: THYPIN STEEL / 49-49 Hunters Point Ave.

Thypin Steel.  Stone tabet identifies the company's founder as Abraham Thypin.  (T.Rinaldi)

A modest sign facing Manhattan from a low-slung industrial building just north of the Long Island Expressway.  Stone tablet on the building dates Thypin's founding to 1910, and the building (along with the sign perhaps?) to 1950. 

16: PARAGON OILS / 29-02 49th Ave.

(R. McEnery / trainsarefun.com)

Paragon signs, then-and-now.  (T.Rinaldi)

Faded painted signs on the walls of this old building sandwiched between the railroad tracks and the Long Island Expressway recall the Paragon Oils spectacular that once stood on the rooftop of the Queens Subway Building.  The sign advertised Paragon heating oils on one side, and Texaco (which apparently owned Paragon) on the other.  The steel framework remains, still in use for ordinary billboards that occupy Paragon's perch today. (See the Newtown Pentacle for more on Paragon and the Queens Subway Building.) 

THE NEW JETBLUE SPECTACULAR: SOME VITAL STATISTICS

• Overall Dimensions: 75' long by 45' high (from the roof)

• Largest Letter: 25'4" high

• Made By: Going Signs (as subcontractor to Turner Construction)

• Design: HLW International, MS Signs and Going Signs

• Components: Steel channel letters with acrylic faces

• Illumination: High efficiency LED light strips

SEE ALSO:

• YouTube video posted by Going Signs showing the JetBlue installation in fast motion.
• JetBlue sign coverage at the New York Times and DNAinfo.
• The signs in old photos at the Greater Astoria Historical Society, nycsubway.org and trainsarefun.com. 

SPECIAL THANKS to Ross Savedge and Jillian Perrius for moral support in the production of this post.