The Neon's Red Glare

July 4th: a good day for bar-b-cues, parades, not going to work, and - that's right - American flags rendered in neon.

I spotted this little darlin' some years ago at a newsstand in the Union Square subway station.  It has since disappeared, I am sorry to report.  But as a quantity item, there seem to be others around.  Keep an eye out and drop me a line if you spot one!

If that doesn't get your patriotic juices flowing, there's also this handsome jobber, which caught my eye from the window of the New York Nail salon on Route 9 in Hyde Park, New York.

Illuminated Engineering Practice, 1916. (NYPL)


In researching the neon book, I found that electrified displays of patriotism are nothing new.  Precedents go back to the earliest days of incandescent bulb signs.  William Hammer, the Edison-associated credited with creating the world's first electric sign, is said to have mocked-up animated electric flags as early as 1889.  In the years leading up to America's entry into WWI, animated flag signs became profuse: Betts & Betts, then the industry's most prominent maker of "flasher" mechanisms for electric signs, even introduced a special automated switching device intended for animated flags by 1916.

Stars and Stripes aglow, around the time of the First World War.  (Signs of the Times magazine, Feb-Mar 1916)

Illuminated patriotism seems to have subsided somewhat during the interwar years, but made a come-back during WWII, by which time Americans had turned to neon as their illuminant of choice.  Today one can still find a few neon iterations of Old Glory out and about.  But here as with so many other displays, the trend is toward LEDs, as the recent conversion (from fluorescent lamps to LEDs) of the illuminated flag at the Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station attests.  Proof thro' the night that our flag, if not our neon, is still there.

   

The Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square, before (above) and after (below) LED-ification. (T.Rinaldi)

Terminal Bar

A brief tribute this week to a sign I never saw:  the Terminal Bar, across Ninth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, was not the kind of place my parents brought me on our visits to New York when I was a kid.  And lo, by the time I was old enough to venture into such establishments on my own, it was but a memory.  One can get a sense for the good old days, though, in this really spectacular short film, part of a longer work by Stefan Nadelman, that I came across thanks to the great then-and-now study of the film "Taxi Driver" over at ScoutingNY (the Terminal Bar makes a brief cameo in Scorsese's 1976 film).  Mr. Nedelman's film uses photographs and reminiscences from his father Sheldon, who tended bar here for ten years.

The Terminal Bar and its neighbors, c. 1976, as depicted in "Taxi Driver". Having just about killed myself trying to get decent rainy night photos for the neon book, I have concluded that Scorsese must have opened some fire hydrants to pull this off.  ("Taxi Driver")

Together with its neighbors, the Exchange Bar and the Bus Stop Bar – both very congenial places, I'm sure – the Terminal Bar made a stirring sight in its day.  Imagine coming out of Port Authority to find THIS - New York's neon receiving line, there to greet you. 

Schnipper's Quality Kitchen, at Eighth Avenue and 41st Street - the site of the Terminal Bar today.  (T. Rinaldi)

The Terminal Bar and its neighbors are ancient history today, of course – Renzo Piano's gleaming New York Times building stands in their place.  Yet, almost improbably, some pretty good new neon has sprouted here on lower reaches of the new building.  Are these hearty seedlings of the signs that existed here before?  Or did someone just feel that this corner wouldn't look right without a good sign?  In a way, perhaps, a bit of both. 

(The New York Times building has some other great signs at street level – does anyone know who made them?)

Above: New signs on the lower reaches of the new New York Times building. (T. Rinaldi) 

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• The neon book has gone out to the printer!
• Did anyone watch Jeopardy last night (May 7, 2012)? The correct response to final Jeopardy was "What is NEON?" and yes, I am pleased to say I got it right.