Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past

Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past
By Frank Mastropolo

Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 2019 Hardcover, 128 pages. $19.99

Reviewed by Ronald Ladouceur

For crying out loud, you’re in Manhattan, look up. No, not at the new supertall or other showy structure trying to command your attention. But instead at the weathered, broken, and graffitied bits of commercial history that still cling to the City’s gritty surfaces. As Frank Mastropolo demonstrates in Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past, you’ll be richly rewarded, for these artifacts, invisible until they aren’t, are portals in time.

As they say, every picture tells a story.