Ghost Signs: The Faded Painted Advertising of Old Cities

^{HAND-PAINTED WALL ADVERTISING THAT HAS OUTLASTED THE BUSINESSES IT WAS PAINTED FOR}

Ghost signs are old hand-painted advertisements that survive on the walls of buildings whose use has since changed. Historic England describes them as snapshots in time and relics of social history. According to Sam Roberts and Roy Reed, authors of Ghost Signs: A London Story, most were created between the 1870s and the 1930s. In the United States the painters who produced them were known as walldogs. The signs were first painted in oil-based house paints, some of which contained lead, and the lead helped the paint adhere firmly to brick. That durability, and the fact that many signs were painted over or hidden by later construction, explains why lettering for closed shops and discontinued products can still be read on city walls. Since the late 1990s photographers, archivists and heritage bodies have begun recording them, and their survival has prompted a continuing debate over whether faded signs should be repainted, protected or left alone.

^{WHAT ARE GHOST SIGNS?}

The word ghost refers to fading, not to anything supernatural, and there is no official definition. Roberts and Reed describe the signs by their translucent appearance. Historic England's examples show the range: the Sankeys Soap lettering on Beehive Mill in Ancoats, Manchester, a cotton mill built in the 1820s that later made soap, has outlived the nightclub that operated there from 1994 to 2017. In York, F.R. Stubbs, an ironmonger founded in 1904, moved into Foss Bridge House in 1915 and traded there until 2001, and its name remains painted on the building. In Stamford Hill, London, a sign survives for Yager's Costumes to Measure, a wholesale costumier that opened in 1919.

Many walls carry more than one advertisement. On Stoke Newington Church Street in London, a triple-layer wall advertises the Westminster Gazette, Criterion Matches and Gillette razors, and Design Week cited the Gillette and Criterion pairing as an accidental collage. Because signs were painted repeatedly, the original layer was often preserved beneath later ones and shows through as the top coat weathers. Not every example is painted. On Fleet Street, the London offices of the Dundee publisher DC Thomson carry mosaic lettering for the Dundee Courier and the Dundee Evening Telegraph. On the Barbican in Plymouth, a late 18th-century building that is now a gift and ice cream shop still carries signage for the South Western Railway offices it once housed.

^{WHO PAINTED THEM? SIGN PAINTERS AND WALLDOGS}

NPR Illinois, reporting on the modern mural movement, notes that the people who originally painted advertisements on buildings were called walldogs. The best-documented American campaign is Mail Pouch tobacco. The brothers Aaron and Samuel Bloch began the business from a grocery and dry goods store in Wheeling, West Virginia, made the first sale of Mail Pouch on 15 October 1879, turned to tobacco alone after an 1884 flood destroyed the store, and incorporated in December 1890. According to Goldenseal, the magazine of West Virginia's Department of Arts, Culture and History, barn owners were paid $1 to $2 a year to carry the advertisement, and the fresh coat of paint every few years was probably worth more to them.

Harley Warrick of Belmont County, Ohio, painted much of the Mail Pouch advertising after the Second World War. He estimated that he painted about 20,000 barns in a career of more than half a century, each job taking about six hours. A partner applied the black background while Warrick painted the lettering, and together they could finish two barns a day. The signs were mostly painted freehand, usually in black or red with yellow or white capitals, carrying the line Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco, Treat Yourself to the Best. The Smithsonian Institution exhibited his work. Swisher International, then the brand's owner, ended barn advertising in 1992 when Warrick retired. Coca-Cola ran the largest painted wall campaign. According to Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, its wall signs date to the 1890s, and more than 16,000 were painted before the company ended the practice in the 1970s. Andy Thompson has painted them for the company since 1958.

^{WHY DO GHOST SIGNS SURVIVE SO LONG?}

The first reason is the paint. Historic England notes that ghost signs were first painted in oil-based house paints, some of which contained lead, which helped the paint adhere firmly to masonry, and Design Week attributes the longevity of some signs to the white lead added to the paint. The second reason is repetition. Signs were repainted at intervals, so a weathered surface often has an older, intact layer beneath it. The third is concealment. Archaeology magazine's account of the photographer Frank Jump's work notes that some New York signs survived because newer buildings were built next to them, and were revealed when those buildings were demolished.

The same processes also destroy them. Preservation records that many early Coca-Cola signs were lost when buildings were demolished, while others were painted over, covered by new construction or left to fade and chip. In New York, an Omega Oil sign emerged near Lincoln Center during demolition and construction in the 1990s, but Jump observed that any site could be bought and redeveloped, taking its sign with it the next day. He also noted that the signs were largely untouched by graffiti, and that those in Harlem had survived because the area had seen less rebuilding than the rest of the city.

^{THE GHOST SIGNS OF NEW YORK}

Frank Jump began photographing the city's painted advertisements in 1997, after a photography course taken while completing a degree he had left unfinished in the late 1970s, and had compiled more than 500 images by 1998, when his work was shown in Fading Ad Campaign: Vintage Painted Signs at the New-York Historical Society. Archaeology magazine's account of the project dates a Reckitt's Blue sign, for a laundry product no longer made in the United States, at Washington Avenue and Dean Street in Brooklyn to about 1898. A sign for Miss Weber Millinery in the Flatiron District dates from about 1910, and one for Weber and Heilbroner, a men's outfitter that traded from 1913 to 1979, survives on West 35th Street.

A Baby Ruth sign on Delancey Street dates from about 1930. Omega Oil, sold as a remedy by a company incorporated from 1870 to 1924, advertised in Times Square, and its painted signs survived in Harlem. The most widespread was Fletcher's Castoria, from about 1920, found in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, with the heaviest concentration below Canal Street and nearly intact examples on Mott Street and near East Broadway. Hand-painted outdoor advertising in the city has since been revived commercially. Colossal Media, founded in 2004 by Paul Lindahl and Adrian Moeller and based in Brooklyn, paints billboards and murals by hand for clients including Tiffany, Chanel, Dior and Delta.

^{GHOST SIGNS IN LONDON AND THE GHOSTSIGNS ARCHIVE}

In Britain, systematic recording began with Sam Roberts, a former advertising executive who started photographing fading wall advertisements near his home in north London in the mid-2000s and used Flickr to find others to help photograph and research them. In March 2010 the Ghostsigns archive of about 600 items was launched at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. It is held by the History of Advertising Trust, sponsored by Rank Hovis and free to access. Design Week's report on the launch divided the brands it records into those that have disappeared, such as Bile Beans, Turog bread and Black Cat cigarettes, and those still trading, such as Hovis, Gillette, Twinings, Nestlé and Boots.

The archive also shows how wall space was bought. One Hovis sign paired the brand with the name of the local baker who sold it, a Waterman pen sign was painted beside Walker Brothers, the fountain pen specialist that stocked it, and signs near railway stations were placed to be seen by passengers. In 2021 Roberts and the photographer Roy Reed published Ghost Signs: A London Story with Isola Press. The authors located about 700 ghost signs in London and selected 250 for the book, among them Boots on Camden High Street, Gillette on Clapham High Street and the lettering of CH N. Katz, a paper bag, string and twine merchant in the East End.

^{SHOULD GHOST SIGNS BE RESTORED?}

Most ghost signs have no legal protection of their own, and Roberts has warned that because few are listed, many may be lost. Design Week reported that public and media interest prompted a move in 2007 to protect ghost signs in the way listed buildings are protected. Some survive on buildings that are listed in their own right, including Beehive Mill, which is Grade II* listed, and Foss Bridge House, which is Grade II. In the United States, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 restricted roadside advertising, and in 1974 Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia had the Mail Pouch barns declared exempt, recognising them as historic landmarks.

Repainting is the main alternative to protection, and practice varies. In 2011 the mayor of Concord, North Carolina, asked Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated to restore a faded sign as part of the town's downtown regeneration. The project became a wider programme: more than two dozen signs in the south-eastern United States have been restored, with 35 more under consideration. Painters scrape off the old paint, prime the wall, repair damaged brick and follow Coca-Cola's early specifications, including exact shades of red and green and the length of the tail on the C in Cola. Where a sign is too faded to paint freehand, the pattern is measured out first.

The Walldogs, a mural group founded in 1993 by Nancy Bennett after she was asked to restore a painted advertisement on a hotel in Allerton, Iowa, organise events at which sign painters and local volunteers paint a town's murals over a few days, and in 2010 the International Walldog Mural and Sign Art Museum opened in Pontiac, Illinois. Not every town has chosen repainting. In 2013 NBC Montana reported that a historic preservation official in Butte had asked for protection of the city's ghost signs, some more than 100 years old, while officials considered whether to preserve them as they are or repaint them.

^{BROADWAY: GHOST ART AT EMIRATES PALACE ABU DHABI}

Painted signs are also kept and recreated in hospitality buildings. At the Fort Road Hotel in Margate, Kent, Historic England records that a faded sign, photographed in 2010, was visible before the building became a boutique hotel and has since been repainted in a similar style. In Leeds, a chef renovating the Empire Café uncovered lettering that had been hidden for more than 60 years. It is thought to date from the first half of the 20th century, and its name may refer to the Empire Palace Theatre that once stood nearby.

Broadway at Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi is a brasserie and brewery bar designed by Silverfox Studios and completed in 2023. It is imagined as a brewery set up in a 1920s New York warehouse in the theatre district, and beer is brewed on site. Brick columns and walls are painted with faded 1920s advertising to create an aged ghost art effect. In The Cellar, a lounge under a brick vaulted ceiling, the ghost art advertises theatre productions. Signage throughout uses a 1920s typeface, with the Broadway name in neon lettering.

SOURCES

1. Historic England, Heritage Calling Ghost Signs: Spooky Remains of a Hidden Past
2. Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America Fading Ads
3. Goldenseal, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History Mail Pouch Barns
4. Preservation Magazine, National Trust for Historic Preservation Outside the Box: Old Coca-Cola Advertisements Get a Fresh Coat of Paint
5. NPR Illinois Walldogs: Building Murals Spruce Up Towns
6. Design Week Yesteryear's Ads
7. The Spaces Reading London's Ghost Signs
8. ABC7 New York Colossal Media Artists Hand Paint Massive Billboards
9. NBC Montana Butte's Ghost Signs Face Uncertain Future