Glow West: How Los Angeles’ Neon Language Set the Tone for Las Vegas’ Iconic Cityscape
Wilshire Boulevard, Circa 1937. Photo by Herman Schultheis, Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection, Los Angeles Public Library
From PBSSocal: Long before Angelenos were constrained by bumper-to-bumper traffic, the city’s streets presented a wide, expansive sprawl ripe for new businesses and roadside attractions designed to reel motorists in with bright lights and marketing extravaganzas. Neon lights answered that call. They were brilliant, fanciful, and strictly twentieth century. Their vivid velocity, easy cheerfulness, and attention-grabbing shimmer helped define what Los Angeles was and what it had to offer. The city’s emphasis on neon decoration extended even to its downtown buildings, constructed under the 1911 height restriction that limited structures to 150 feet. To stand out among block after block of twelve-story buildings, double-sided vertical signs stretched toward the sky. Neon companies sprouted across Southern California in the 1920s and 1930s and went to great lengths to promote themselves and the new advertising medium they represented.
Let There Be Neon
From CUNY TV: We all recognize the warm glow of neon from the signs that adorn our city’s theaters, stores, and art galleries but where does it come from and how is it made? One workshop in Brooklyn has been creating this illuminated art for more than 50 years. Donna Hanover shines a light on these neon-inspired artists at Let There Be Neon.
‘Race against time’ to rescue Alabama Civil Rights landmark
The dilapidated Edistone Hotel building has stood in Selma since 1855 © Jay Brittain
From The Art Newspaper: The Edistone Hotel has stood in downtown Selma, Alabama, since 1855 witnessing the tides of history, from slavery to the Civil War to the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Movement. In the late 20th century, it was closed and neglected amid the loss of many of the city’s industries and the decline of its population. The three-storey brick building with its boarded-up windows seemed to await the inevitable wrecking ball, until this past autumn when its acquisition by the Conservation Fund was announced.
The hotel is now part of the non-profit’s Legacy Places Initiative, concentrated on sites of African American heritage at risk of disappearing because of development or demolition. The Conservation Fund specialises in land acquisition and conservation, acting as a bridge of ownership that protects vulnerable sites until they can be stewarded by community partners. It previously purchased the final home of the writer Zora Neale Hurston in Florida (after it came on the open market) as well as the Mifflin House in Pennsylvania—a stop on the Underground Railroad—when it was under threat of being torn down.
This 1957 Colorado Diner Still Serves Old-School Breakfast At Its Worn Counter, And Regulars Keep Packing In For The Biscuits And Gravy
© Davies’ Chuck Wagon Diner, Lakewood, CO
From Fast Food Club: Some places don’t have to try hard to feel authentic because they were already there when the trend started. A neon sign with a galloping horse still lights up a busy stretch of road just west of Denver, marking a spot that has been feeding folks since the days of tail fins and jukeboxes.
Bright vinyl booths, a counter smoothed down by decades of elbows, and oldies playing on repeat set the mood the moment you walk in. Generations of Colorado families have made this their morning ritual, and newcomers keep discovering it while passing through town.
Decades-old Goodyear sign stolen from family-owned tire shop in Oklahoma City
From KOCO: OKLAHOMA CITY — A decades-old Goodyear sign was stolen from Ira’s Tire Shop in downtown Oklahoma City late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, according to the shop’s owner.
The sign, a well-known feature of the shop located off Oklahoma City Boulevard, holds significant sentimental value for Justin Smith, the manager and owner, whose family has operated the business for generations.
Kansas City’s iconic Western Auto sign will light up the downtown skyline after a year in the dark
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas announced on social media that the historic Western Auto sign will light up the night sky once again, starting Tuesday evening. The sign has been dark for more than one year. Stephen R. Hawks / Wikimedia
From KCUR: Kansas City’s iconic Western Auto sign will return to the downtown skyline Tuesday after a year-long absence.
The massive steel and porcelain enamel sign on top of the Western Auto Lofts building, at 2107 Grand Boulevard, has been dark since July last year, and was in need of substantial repairs.
So, workers from a local sign shop have spent the past several months restoring what’s been a glowing Kansas City landmark since it was placed atop the seven-story building in 1952.
Neon, its birth and death in Hawai‘i
By the 1940s in American popular culture, blinking neon signs had come to have a negative connotation of sleazy downtown streets. The Swing Club on Hotel Street, seen here in 1958, unfortunately exemplifies that idea. (Laurence Hata, Bishop Museum Archives)
From Aloha State Daily: There was a time when neon signs were all over the place in Honolulu, and indeed pretty much all over the world. Today they are rare to nearly nonexistent, and they mostly evoke memories of the middle decades of the 20th century. What is neon? What made it popular, and why did it go away?
First, scientifically, neon is a rare gas which is naturally present in a small amount in earth’s atmosphere; it was first identified as an element in 1898. A French inventor, Georges Claude, discovered that if pure neon gas enclosed in an airtight glass enclosure was electrified, it would give off a bright orange-red glow. In 1912 Claude’s company, using this technology, began manufacturing the first neon advertising signs. (Although known just as “neon signs” they did, in fact, use other gases as well to produce different colors.) After coming into use in France, the first such electric signs were displayed in the USA in the early 1920s (said to specifically have been by a Los Angeles car dealership in 1923), and Americans immediately took to these amazing and striking new lights that soon would dramatically alter downtown streets by night.