Was Rexall, Now Blockheads

Something about the Blockheads sign on Second Avenue and East 50th Street doesn't seem quite right.  It looks like an old sign.  But it also doesn't.  The sheet metal wrapping the sides of its distinctive silhouette looks like it's been around a while.  But the aluminum sign faces and the lettering are clearly not very old, nor has Blockheads (a local chain of Mexican restaurants) been around all that long (their web site dates the chain's inception to 1989).  So I never counted it in my survey of New York's old neon signs. Ex-Rex at 954 Second Ave. (T. Rinaldi)

Then I saw this:  a pizza joint sign in Mundelein, Illinois, surveyed by Debra Jane Seltzer this past August.  

Bill's Pizza and Fabulous Hot Dogs, in Mundelein, ILL.  (Debra Jane Seltzer)

This is actually, as Debra Jane immediately recognized, an ex-Rexall Drugs sign re-lettered for the pizza joint.   Aha!  Rexall affiliates hung signs of this standard design all over the country (Debra Jane has compiled a gallery – actually four galleries - of them here).  At least two of them have been recycled in this way. 

A Rexall sign in its original livery, at Stewart Drugs in Lexington, Tennessee. (Debra Jane Seltzer)

The question is:  was this Second Avenue storefront a Rexall before Blockheads came along?  Or did Blockheads just salvage this old sign from someplace else and hang it here?  The 1980s tax photos at the Municipal Archives web site are just plain too fuzzy to solve this mystery, though there does appear to be a sign of about the same size and shape in place here.  Do any east side old timers know the answer?

SPECIAL THANKS to Debra Jane Seltzer for lending the photos in this post. 

NEW YORK NEON IN THE NEWS: 

• Very nice coverage of New York Neon in Friday's (10/19/12) New York Times, in Eve Kahn's Antiques Column. IN OTHER NEON NEWS:  • Further down 2nd Ave, some neon and other signs in photographs by Jim and Karla Murray. • Via the JVNY and ATZ blogs – Coney’s old Playland building is finally being demolished together with the hulk of its old sign. • In Detroit, Tiger Stadium is gone but preservationists managed to save the sign, which has just been re-lit. (Thanks to Eve Kahn for the link.) UPCOMING NYNEON TALKS: • Nov. 19, 2012 at the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation • Nov. 29, 2012 at the Skyscraper Museum • Jan. 24, 2013 at the 92nd Street Y TriBeCa

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.

On Columbus Circle

In 1986, then-New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger decried a new roof sign advertising Hitachi electronics at Columbus Circle as "one of the sharpest visual intrusions the midtown skyline has seen in years."  The location is held down today by the CNN sign.  "It is not all that bad looking in itself, and it might look fine on Times Square," Goldberger wrote then. "But it could not be more wrong for this rooftop perch, where it brings a garish commercialism directly into Central Park."

Historically, however, Columbus Circle may have been second only to Times Square in the number of big off-premise roof signs gathered there.  Old photographs by Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott show some of New York's most extravagant spectaculars presiding over the Circle in decades past.  

Berenice Abbott's view of Columbus Circle through the Schenley Whiskey spectacular, dated February 10, 1936 (MCNY).  Walker Evans photograph showing the US Rubber and Fisk Tires signs, c. 1930 (MMA).  

Today the CNN sign (successor to the Hitachi spectacular) is the last living vestige of the days when the rooftops over this corner of Central Park glittered with an array of "garish commercialism." Though Times Square has always been known for its signs, the world's first large illuminated commercial sign in fact debuted at Madison Square, in 1891. Over the next few decades, rooftop spectaculars sprouted at most of the big intersections formed by Broadway's diagonal axis, from Union Square at 14th Street right up to Columbus Circle at 59th and Lincoln Square at 66th.  

Columbus Circle, looking south, c. 1925.  The US Tires building blocked an earlier sign advertising B.F. Goodrich.  (MCNY)

Many of the signs over Columbus Circle peddled the wares of "Automobile Row," the stretch of Broadway in the West 50s and 60s where the auto industry established a strong presence in the early 1900s.  B.F. Goodrich installed large illuminated roof signs over its headquarters building around 1910.  Signs for U.S. Rubber and Fisk Tires followed.  By the 1930s, there were Columbus Circle spectaculars advertising Coca Cola and Schenley's Whiskey, as well as big roof signs for the the Manufacturers Trust, Mayflower Hotel and Kent Garage.

Looking northwest across the Circle c. 1930.  The Manufacturers Trust sign presided over Columbus Circle from a site now occupied by the Time Warner Center. (MCNY)

Zoning ordinances enacted in the 1960s blocked the installation of signs like these throughout the city (except at Times Square). The CNN sign survives thanks to a loophole allowing the installation of new signs where older signs have existed continuously since the restrictive zoning code went into effect. Roof signs outside Times Square therefore are typically successors to a long line of interesting predecessors.

 

The General Motors sign seen in a Samuel Gottscho photo, February 11, 1932 (MCNY, top).  The sign survived long enough to enjoy a quick cameo in the 1971 film Shaft (bottom). 

The CNN sign owes its existence to the General Motors sign, installed around 1928 on the roof of the newly completed GM headquarters at 1775 Broadway.  The GM sign survived for an incredibly long time - apparently right up until the lamented Hitachi sign took its place in the mid-1980s, by which time the automaker had moved already moved out of the building below. Hitachi survived just a few years: it lost the spot to the A&E Biography sign around 1990, which in turn yielded to CNN in 2005.  

I could find only this one likeness of Paul Goldberger's detested Hitachi sign, in the 1988 film "Running on Empty."

The A&E Biography sign presided over the Circle from about 1990 to 2005.  (cable360.net)

The old GM building itself was sadly horrifically bastardized a few years ago, its art deco facades by Empire State Building architects Shreve, Lamb and Harmon masked beneath a new glassy skin.  Though it shares no frontage on the Circle proper, the building has been re-branded "3 Columbus Circle."  But the CNN sign survives, shining out as its predecessors have for more than 80 years.  Its value as one of the very few grandfathered roof signs on the Manhattan skyline will likely ensure a quick transformation when the time comes for a new sign to take its place. 

SEE ALSO:
• Paul Goldberger's Hitachi Lament, as published in the Times back in '86 (scroll down).
• David Dunlap's coverage of the GM building's horrific bastardization in the New York Times.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• Colony Records has expired, "gone for good" as of this past weekend. 

Colony Record and Radio Center

The disappearance of Colony Record's old sign back in 2004 was one of those episodes that sewed the seeds of the project that became New York Neon.  The Colony survived and even installed some new neon, but the loss of its old sign made me realize that the time had come to start photographing the city's veteran neon before it was too late.  And now, as reported last month, the Colony's replacement sign too is set to vanish.

The Colony's current sign. (T. Rinaldi)  

The old sign whose loss I so ruefully bemoaned 8 years ago was not very old at all, as it turns out.  Though it looked like something out of the Robert Wagner era, it seems to have actually appeared in the early '70s, when the Colony moved into the famous Brill Building from its original location at 52nd and Broadway. The sign was memorable for its poodle skirt-clad neon maiden, leaping joyfully into the air, disk in hand, exclaiming I FOUND IT!  


The Colony's old sign, seen in an old photo formerly shown in its display window.

The disk girl was the successor not just to the Colony's original sign, but also to a series of extraordinary neon storefront displays that have anchored the northwest corner of 49th and Broadway for more than 80 years.  

The Colony's original sign, at 52nd and Broadway, made a brief appearance in John Schlesinger's 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. (Flickr.com / ChristianMontone, above; Midnight Cowboy, below)

The Brill Building opened in 1931, and by 1933 the corner now occupied by the Colony stood dressed in 2,500 feet of red and blue neon heralding impresario Nils T. Granlund's "Paradise Cabaret," a second floor nightclub that featured the "World's Most Beautiful Girls."  The Paradise didn't last long: by 1940 it had re-opened as a nightclub called the Hurricane, which itself made way for the exotic sounding Cafe Zanzibar by 1944. But the Zanzibar too proved not long for this corner: in 1949 it yielded to Bop City, a jazz club that lasted only a few years, despite featuring some notable headliners.

The Colony's spiritual ancestors: NTG's Paradise Cafe; Cafe Zanzibar, photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt; Bop City, in a 1953 photo by Herman Leonard.  (Signs of the Times magazine, April 1933, used with permission, top; Alfred Eisenstaedt / Life Magazine, center; Herman Leonard / morrisonhotelgallery.com, bottom) 

The ground floor meanwhile housed Jack Amiel and Arnold Ruben's Turf Restaurant, which opened in 1940 and outlived one nightclub after the next until it finally closed in 1963.  The upstairs space eventually became home to a joint called the Avalon Ballroom (of which I could find no photos), but this too closed by 1966.  The northern part of the Brill Building meanwhile initially housed a Translux movie theater, which made way in 1937 for Jack Dempsey's "Broadway Bar and Cocktail Lounge."  Jack Dempsey's lasted clear up through 1974, about the time the Colony showed up. 


The Colony's sign swap, c. 2004, see in photo formerly displayed in its display windows. 

Today, the Colony's modest animated sign is the sole heir to a succession of legendary New York neon.  (An April 2011 post on the blog Lost City yielded some details on the old sign's disappearance - a zoning code issue, reportedly.)  What will follow it is anyone's guess.  A rather sinister rendering of the storefront's possible future appeared last week on the Jeremiah's Vanishing New York blog (which also shared a New York Post report that the Brill Building's new owner helped usher along the Colony's demise by imposing a five-fold rent hike). Whatever comes here next will have some big neon shoes to fill.


The disk girl, re-born as a window display after the old disappeared in 2004, will soon flash her last. (T. Rinaldi) 

SEE ALSO:

• First word of Colony's Closing, at JVNY.

• JVNY's report on the mega rent hike.

• NYT piece on the end of the Colony.

• Lost City blog's post on the Colony's 2004 sign swap.

• Highly informative LPC designation report for the Brill Building.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• I have seen the neon book, and it is good!  She'll be in stores in about a month's time . . . 

Harlem YMCA

The Harlem YMCA is among the more sparkly gems on the neon book's cutting room floor.  In fact, it wasn't supposed to be there.  I had photographed it and even written the following caption for the book: 


Harlem YMCA: 180 West 135th Street, installed c. 1932 

"The great roof signs of the Harlem YMCA date to the building's opening on New Year's Day 1933, making them among the oldest functioning neon signs in New York today. (A vertical sign over the main entrance, not pictured, is a very convincing facsimile of a sign installed around 1950.) Determined not to lose business to movie houses and other less wholesome amusement venues, YMCAs across the United States almost invariably hung large illuminated signs high on their facades by the early years of the twentieth century." 

Two dusky views of the Harlem YMCA's roof signs, which have beamed out over East Harlem from their perch on 135th Street since 1933.  (T. Rinaldi)


The vertical sign over the door of the YMCA seems to have appeared around 1950.  The existing sign is a very convincing facsimile of the original, installed by Silverescent Neon around 1996.  (T. Rinaldi)

Somewhere along the line, the Harlem Y was accidentally dropped from the book. I realized this, to my acute horror, only once it was too late to squeeze it back in.  

As noted in the would-be caption text above, illuminated signs almost invariably hung over the doors and rooftops of YMCAs in New York and elsewhere.  Surviving examples in cities in towns all across the USA still attest to this, but the Harlem YMCA boasts New York's last bit of YMCA neon - with one exception.   

Electric signs became standard equipment for YMCAs across America in the early 20th century. 

Through the basement windows of an old brick building on West 23rd Street, just across from the Chelsea Hotel, passersby can glimpse one other surviving vestige of Y neon.  The sign once hung high aloft from the facade of the same building, formerly the McBurney YMCA, now home to the David Barton Gym.  Only the letter M comes alight today, casting its red glow over the gym's well heeled, well formed patrons writhing on elliptical machines weight benches.   

The McBurney YMCA's old neon sign, now decor at the David Barton gym. (T. Rinaldi)

The sign's innate coolness would surely have sufficed to justify the enormous effort of moving it down here.  But this sign has a special place in history, too - namely, its starring role in a certain music video . . .  

I refer, of course, to the Village People's 1978 gift to humanity, "YMCA".  The video is well worth a look not just for an idea of what the old McBurney YMCA sign looked like in place (or for a good pep talk, should you need one), but for a whole series of shots showing Chelsea and Greenwich Village in the heady days just before the AIDS crisis.  The sign remained in place through it all, until the McBurney branch moved from 23rd Street to its current location (on West 14th Street) in 2002.

No man does it all by himself. (YouTube)

  

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• Further down West 23rd Street, a facsimile has replaced the Westside Tavern's old blue BAR sign.