Fading Ad Blog Rotating Header Image

Ghost signs, ghost ads & other phantoms

Fading Ads of Greenpoint Walking Tour | WORD | Sunday, March 18th @ 2PM

Fading Ads of Greenpoint Walking Tour
Start: 03/18/2012 2:00 pm
Timezone: America/New York

Location:
126 Franklin St.
Brooklyn, New York
11222-2002
United States

Get a glimpse into Greenpoint’s history with a walking tour, led by author and photographer Frank Jump. For nearly 20 years, Jump has been documenting the fading ads that are visible, but less often seen, all over New York. Disappearing from the sides of buildings or hidden by new construction, these signs tell the stories of the businesses, places and people whose lives transpired among them.

New York City is eternally evolving. From its iconic skyline to its side alleys, the new is perpetually being built on the debris of the past. But a movement to preserve the city’s vanishing landscapes has emerged. They weave together the city’s unique history, culture, environment and society and tell the stories of the businesses, places and people–the story of New York itself. This photo-documentary is also a study of time and space, of mortality and living, as Jump’s campaign to capture the ads mirrors his own struggle with HIV. Experience the ads–shot with vintage Kodachrome film–and the meaning they carry through acclaimed photographer and urban documentarian Frank Jump’s lens.

During the walking tour and book-signing, Jump will offer a glimpse into Greenpoint’s commercial advertising history through remnant fading ads. Don’t let the tour leave without you! We’ll be meeting at the store at 2 p.m., where Frank will introduce the book and give us an overview for the walk, and then we’ll head out at 2:30 p.m. Rain or shine! (If it rains, we’ll have a virtual slideshow tour at WORD instead.) Facebook RSVP appreciated!

Featured Fade – Hotel Herald – Tenderloin – San Francisco, CA – Sheryl Stark

© Sheryl Stark

1910 hotel by architect Alfred Henry Jacobs; contributing property to the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District; now a low-income public senior housing facility. – National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco, California – Wikipedia

M.H. Koski, Inc. – Loans – Chesterfield Cigarettes Ad – Brooklyn Eagle Want Ads “Ask For Miss Turner” – Clinton Hill, Brooklyn – A Brownstowner Find!

© Frank H. Jump

A few weeks ago, the billboard that’s hung on the side of the bodega at Grand and Putnam avenues was taken down to reveal this old painted advertisement for M.H. Koski. As it turns out, the old-school pawn shop use to be headquartered in this very location, according to a Brooklyn Eagle ad from May 24, 1946 promoting “liberal loans on diamonds-jewelry and personal property.” If the shop had only stuck it out until the corner became a hotbed of the drug trade in the 70′s and 80′s it could have really cashed in. GMAP

By Brownstoner | 03/09/2012 12:00 PM

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

Brooklyn Eagle - Tom Tryniski's Fulton History dot com

Want Ads - Young Men Single & Free - Brooklyn Eagle - Old Fulton N.Y. Postcards by Tom Tryniski

CLICK FOR Old Fulton N.Y. Postcards by Tom Tryniski

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-11

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-04

Powered by Twitter Tools

These Wonderful Vintage New York Ad Murals Are Still Trying To Sell Us Things From The 1800’s – BusinessInsider.com

All over the city, ads can still be seen that were first painted in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Often they sell goods that no longer exist (horse carriage repairs) or promote once-famous but extinct brands that recall a simpler time (Uneeda Biscuits).

Jump, 37 at the time he began shooting fading ad murals, felt a kinship with the images because in 1984 he had been diagnosed with HIV, at the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when most people with the disease soon died. “I am photographing these images that I never expected to live so long, and I never expected to live so long,” he told us. – Jim Edwards

Read more: Business Insider

R.H. Macy’s Uptown Stables at West 148th Street, Harlem. Ad circa 1900s. Macy's would have used the stables to make delivery orders telegraphed to it from the 34th Street store.

These Wonderful Vintage New York Ad Murals Are Still Trying To Sell Us Things From The 1800’s – BusinessInsider.com.

Hand-painted Faux Show Cards, Wheatpastes & Woody Guthrie the Sign-Painter

Contrary to popular mythology, it was with paint brushes in hand, not a guitar, that [Woody] Guthrie hit the road for California. He had hocked his guitar . . . and it was his artistic skills that he brokered for room and board.Nora Guthrie

For Woody Guthrie dot org © Shepard Fairey, Obey Giant

I’ve had more than my share of time on my hands the last few days – off my feet due to an accident – and I’ve been watching Turner Classics. We watched back-to-back The Grapes of Wrath, based on Steinbeck’s brutal retelling of the Dustbowl era and how big industry exploited American migrant workers during our great economic catastrophe (sound familiar?), and Bound For Glory, the story of Woody Guthrie’s phenomenal yet  humble beginnings of an illustrious career played quite convincingly by David Carradine. During both films, the stark reality of how history repeats itself was made evident – and now yet again the American majority is being exploited by bailed-out banking institutions and holier-than-thou conservative politicians.

Woody Guthrie: Art Works - Rizzoli Books - Authors Steven Brower & Nora Guthrie

As I went walking I saw a sign there – And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.” – But on the other side it didn’t say nothing, – That side was made for you and me. – Alternative verse from This Land is Your Land – Woodie Guthrie

Woody’s first chosen pursuit was painting illustrations and text — he painted signs for businesses to earn a living as a young man before his music became the wellspring of his legacy. As powerful as music can be as medium for social change, the melding of slogans & graphic images has been a powerful and enduring propagandistic tool for both worthy and misguided causes. From Shepard Fairey‘s brilliant Obama Hope Campaign posters to the early hand-painted wall ads for tobacco companies, text and image has been used to persuade, convert, or pervert the masses. Naturally, I was delighted to see Fairey’s “exquisite print” he created for Guthrie’s centennial as a fundraiser when I went to the Official Guthrie Website after seeing the film of his early life. Yet even the simplest urging from a handcrafted store sign or for a sale generated by a stylistic grocery store show card can stop you in your tracks and send you down the aisle looking for a circular coupon. On the Kaufmann Mercantile blog the art of the “snappers,” the slang term that was used to call sign painters, is celebrated and analyzed.

Mixed type and tense lines. From Simplified Show Card Writing, Carl Rousseau Havighorst, 1942 via The Annie Show via Newhouse Books- Kaufmann Mercantile CLICK FOR LINK

Below are the works of who I believe to be a single anonymous snapper who has been posting show cards with wheat paste for ironic and dubious products at bargain prices from the shores of the Gowanus to the wigwams of Tacoma over the last eight years. No clue as to who he or she is but would love to give a proper artists’ credit to the creator of these humors ads with the stylish fonts.

Tacoma Faux Show Card Wheatpaste - Previously posted 8-27-2009 - © Frank H. Jump

Myrtle & Bedford Avenues in August 2005 - Previously posted on FAB on May 4, 2008

Sunset Park Industrial - Hamilton Ave - Previously posted on February 20, 2008 © Frank H. Jump

Other wheatpaste mural art:

Woody Guthrie sites of interest:

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-26

Powered by Twitter Tools

Ghost signs from Vancouver’s past spring up to haunt us still

Ghost signs from Vancouver’s past spring up to haunt us still.

BY JOHN MACKIE, VANCOUVER SUN FEBRUARY 23, 2012

VANCOUVER — Ninety years after it was covered up by a building, a “ghost sign” for a 1922 movie has reappeared at Granville and Robson.

The sign promotes the Harold Lloyd comedy Grandma’s Boy, which played at the Capitol theatre Oct. 2-7, 1922.

The sign is painted onto the north wall of the Power block at 817 Granville, across the street from where the Capitol opened in 1921. Hence the sign includes a red circle reading “Capitol over there,” and features a wonderful disembodied hand with a finger pointing across the street.

Katz & Tauber – Cosmetics, Shaving Supplies, Toothpaste & Oral (?) Preparations – Avenue N – Flatlands, Brooklyn

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Vincenzo Aiosa

Elsewhere on the Internet: