A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. [1]
A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. [1]
Ghost signs are found across the world with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada having many surviving examples. [2] Ghost signs are also called fading ads [3] or brickads. [4] [5] In many cases these are advertisements painted on brick that remained over time. [6] Old painted advertisements are occasionally discovered upon demolition of later-built adjoining structures. Throughout rural areas, old barn advertisements continue to promote defunct brands and quaint roadside attractions. [7]
Many ghost signs from the 1890s to 1960s are still visible. [6] Such signs were most commonly used in the decades before the Great Depression. [8]
[The signs] evoke the exuberant period of American capitalism. Consumer cultures were really getting going and there weren't many rules yet, no landmarks preservation commission or organized community saying: "Isn't this awful? There's a picture of a man chewing tobacco on the corner of my street."
— Kathleen Hulser, New York Historical Society. [8]
The painters of the signs were called "wall dogs". [9] As signage advertising formats changed, less durable signs appeared in the later 20th century, and ghost signs from that era are less common.
Ghost signs were originally painted with oil-based house paints. The paint that has survived the test of time most likely contains lead, which keeps it strongly adhered to the masonry surface. Ghost signs were often preserved through repainting the entire sign since the colors often fade over time. When ownership changed, a new sign would be painted over the old one.
In 2013, conservators undertook an effort to preserve ghost signs in Philadelphia. [10]
In the city of Detroit, well-preserved ghost signs have been uncovered when an adjoining building is demolished as part of the city's blight-fighting efforts. [11] [12]
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are wide range of uses, the most common being the commercial advertisement.
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure, typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers. Typically brands use billboards to build their brands or to push for their new products.
Butte is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers 718 square miles (1,860 km2), and, according to the 2020 census, has a population of 34,494, making it Montana's fifth largest city. It is served by Bert Mooney Airport with airport code BTM.
Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign, roughly from 1850 and later. The styles often included interpretations and eclectic revivals of historic styles (see Historicism). The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it followed Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture, and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.
Classified advertising is a form of advertising, particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, although display advertising is more widespread. They were also commonly called "want" ads, starting in 1763, and are sometimes called small ads in Britain.
Venus Alley was a famous red-light district once located in Butte, Montana in the United States. It flourished from the late 19th century through the early 20th century and was one of the last openly tolerated urban prostitution districts in the American West, along with the one in Reno, Nevada. It was closed in the 1970s.
Roquel "Billy" Davis, of Detroit, was an American songwriter, record producer, and singer. Davis was also known as a writer/producer of commercial jingles, mostly for Coca-Cola. He was also known as Tyran Carlo on writing credits.
In painting, a pentimento is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over".
Bannack is a ghost town in Beaverhead County, Montana, United States, located on Grasshopper Creek, approximately 11 miles (18 km) upstream from where Grasshopper Creek joins with the Beaverhead River south of Dillon. Founded in 1862, the town is a National Historic Landmark managed by the state of Montana as Bannack State Park.
Outfront Media, Inc. is one of the largest outdoor media companies. It operates in markets including the United States and Canada. The Americas division is led by chief executive officer Jeremy Male. Outfront Media operates both billboards and transit displays.
A Mail Pouch Tobacco barn, or simply Mail Pouch barn, is a barn with one or more sides painted with a barn advertisement for the West Virginia Mail Pouch chewing tobacco company. The program ran from 1891 to 1992, and at its height in the early 1960s, about 20,000 Mail Pouch barns were spread across 22 states.
Edmund Blodgette Craney was an American radio and television executive. He brought the first radio station to Butte, Montana, in 1929, KGIR, which eventually became a part of his chain of unparalleled radio stations dubbed "The Z-Bar Network." Craney also had a hand in starting Montana's first local television station in 1953, which was also located in Butte. Craney founded the Montana Broadcasters Association, while KGIR was the first station to join the National Broadcasters Association.
Old Gold is an American brand of cigarette owned and manufactured by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
Virtual advertising is the use of digital technology to insert virtual advertising content into a live or pre-recorded television show, often in sports events. This technique is often used to allow broadcasters to overlay existing physical advertising panels with virtual content on the screen when broadcasting the same event in multiple regions; a Spanish football game will be broadcast in Mexico with Mexican advertising images. Similarly, virtual content can be inserted onto empty space within the sports venue such as the field of play, where physical advertising cannot be placed due to regulatory or safety reasons. Virtual advertising content is intended to be photo-realistic, so that the viewer has the impression they are seeing the real in-stadium advertising.
A barn advertisement is an outdoor advertisement painted onto the exterior of a roadside barn. Advertisers take advantage of the barns' prominence in rural landscapes, paying their owners for the right to paint and maintain logos and slogans on them. Painters of barn advertisements and other murals are known as "wall dogs". Once a common form of billboard advertising in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States during the early– to mid–20th century, barn advertisements have faded into obscurity, as many of these rural ghost signs fall into disrepair, along with the structures that bear them.
Wm. Stage, also known as William Stage is an American journalist, author, and photographer, with a focus on the area and history of the American Midwest and St. Louis, Missouri. From 1982 to 2004 he worked for the weekly newspaper The Riverfront Times, producing three columns, with the best known being Street Talk, where over the years he photographed and interviewed more than 8,500 random individuals about miscellaneous topics. He is also known for his documentary work on a special kind of historical outdoor advertising: vintage brick wall signs. As of 2016, he has authored 11 books, a combination of photography, non-fiction, and fiction, including Ghost Signs: Brick Wall Signs in America (1989), Mound City Chronicles (1991), and Litchfield: A Strange and Twisted Saga of Murder in the Midwest (1998). His photographs have appeared in multiple works, including the cover photograph on the Oxford University Press book, For the Common Good (2002). In 2001, Stage, who had been adopted as an infant, tracked down his biological family, a search which led to a Canadian television documentary and formed the basis for his 2009 memoir Fool for Life. In 2007, Stage was a guest commentator on the St. Louis NPR affiliate, KWMU-FM.
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Super Bowl XXXIV featured 14 advertisements from 14 different dot-com companies, each of which paid an average of $2.2 million per spot. In addition, five companies that were founded before the dot-com bubble also ran tech-related ads, and 2 before game ads, for a total of 21 different dot-com ads. These ads amounted to nearly 20 percent of the 61 spots available, and $44 million in advertising. In addition to ads which ran during the game, several companies also purchased pre-game ads, most of which are lesser known. All of the publicly held companies which advertised saw their stocks slump after the game as the dot-com bubble began to rapidly deflate.
Butte is a city in southwestern Montana established as a mining camp in the 1860s in the northern Rocky Mountains straddling the Continental Divide. Butte became a hotbed for silver and gold mining in its early stages, and grew exponentially upon the advent of electricity in the late-nineteenth century due to the land's large natural stores of copper. In 1888 alone, mining operations in Butte had generated an output of $23 million. The arrival of several magnates in the area around this time, later known as the "Copper Kings," marked the beginning of Butte's establishment as a boomtown.
William Owsley was a Montana pioneer and politician, who was successful in mining, real estate and related ventures in early Butte, Montana. Owsley was the fourth mayor of Butte, elected to two consecutive terms from 1882-3 and from 1883-4.
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