‘Happy Bear’ Signs
By Debra Jane Seltzer – The Bear Manufacturing Company was established in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1917 under the slogan “Let Bear Lug Your Luggage.” If the sign looks familiar to you, you’re probably a Deadhead.
SCA@40: Editors Word: Digging into Commercial Archeology’s Past
FULL ARTICLE MOST OF US have unique stories about how we came to join the SCA. Mine involved an eagle, a birdie, and may have been the only membership linked to golf. At least the course, Valle Vista, was situated just off Route 66 outside of Kingman, Arizona. So that counts for something.
SCA@40: Dawn of a New Age
FULL ARTICLE By Keith A. Sculle – COMMERCIAL ARCHEOLOGY started from the efforts of a few people promoting the preservation of structures that were long ignored and discredited in mid-century America.
SCA@40: Origins
FULL ARTICLE By Arthur Krim Forty years ago, in November 1977, the first annual meeting of the Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA) took place at the Museum of Transportation in Boston, now the site of the Children’s Museum on the Fort Point Channel.
The Playbill: SCA in the Motor City
FULL ARTICLE By Keith A. Sculle – My introduction to the Society for Commercial Archeology was at the second conference held at Columbia University in 1978.
SCA@40: The Meeting That Sparked the Birth of the SCA
FULL ARTICLE By Chester Liebs – On November 20, 1976, I chaired a meeting at the University of Vermont’s Robert Hull Fleming Museum to explore the future of the commercial heritage generated by the automobile in the 20th century.
SCA in the 1990s
FULL ARTICLE By Brian Butko – Century III Mall opened south of Pittsburgh in 1979. That was “my” mall and throughout the 1980s. Its thousands of parking spots would fill to capacity, leaving anxious shoppers to park on streets, on grass, anywhere so they could shop ...
Behind the Story: The World’s Largest Revolving Sign
FULL ARTICLE Douglas Towne answers a few questions regarding his article in the Fall 2017 issue of the SCA Journal, “Ain’t No Valley Higher: The Spin on the World’s Largest Revolving Sign.”
Five Faves: Paintings by Jeffrey L. Neumann
By Jeffrey L. Neumann 1: The Red Ball Café, Albuquerque, NM Watercolor on Arches paper, 22 x 30, 2017 The Red Ball Café opened in 1922 on the original alignment of Route 66. The cafe "gained a local following for New Mexican food and its famous five-cent Wimpy Burgers, complete with a secret chile sauce. But after World War II, business dropped off at the nearby railyards, and the surrounding Barelas neighborhood went into a lengthy period of decline,” wrote Andrew Webb in the Albuquerque Journal in 2005. The Red Ball Café closed in 1979, and the building became a
