Painted Ad

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HomeAboutGalleriesPreservationBuy The Book Recent Posts Wallsigns: Washington, Missouri Robert Ferd Frank Photographer London Ghost Signs Recent Finds 3-Dimensional Business Cards Archives March 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 December 2012 August 2012 July 2012 May 2012 March 2012 February 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 Wallsigns: Washington, Missouri

On 20 January 2014, I had business in the picturesque town of Washington, on the banks of the Missouri, turgid as it was. It was a beautiful morning and, with business completed, I decided to take a walking tour of the town with an eye cast out for wallsigns of interest. This is what I found.

Metered Hausgas West Front at Olive Street 2014

Ad reads in full: Metered Hausgas / The Magic Blue Flame / Refrigeration-Cooking-Heating. Building was likely a sales point for gas appliances; this particular morning it was being swarmed by workmen in the process of rehabbing.

Missouri Meerschaum Factory- West Front at Cedar Street 2014

The Missouri Meerschaum Company has been making corncob pipes for more than 140 years. A plaque on the face of the building reads: Dutch immigrant Henry Tibbe and his son, Anton, began production of corncob pipes in 1869. The first portion of the factory was completed in 1883. The corncob pipe made Washington [MO] famous around the world. In 2014, the factory is still in operation. This type of wall sign is called a factory strip.

Detail, Missouri Meerschaum Factory 2014

Name of company founder seen at eye-level just to left of front entrance. Sign appears to have been painted recently, possibly a touch-up on an older version.

Hardware Machinery 219 West Main 2014

Fading ad seen from street level in Washingtons downtown area.

Vocational Agricultural Shop 2nd Street at Market 2014

Looking like an old one-room schoolhouse found in the countryside, this south-facing building was once used as a classroom for the local public high school. It is just to the east of the downtown area and the Missouri River may be seen in the background to the right. The plain Helvetica lettering identifying its erstwhile purpose is becoming quite faded; a few more decades and its gone. The white vinyl door is an unfortunate anachronism to the otherwise vintage appeal of the structure.

Co-Operative Association No.2 Robert Ferd Frank Photographer Through the last 12 years as a self taught photographer, I have shot many subjects ranging from all-girl roller derby action to warts and all portraiture to life on the Meramec River near my home in Fenton, Missouri. One of my favorite things is photographing the deterioration in blighted communities, so you could say I am an urban artist. On Saturday, December 28th, 2013 it was 60 degrees and there was some interesting cloud cover. A perfect day to explore. I drove along North Broadway and Cass Avenue and found many blighted buildings, some of them probably not long for the wrecking ball. Whenever I am on these missions I always keep an eye out for the painted sign for my good friend William Stage. Some of the signs in this grouping don’t fit the criteria that William has set for this website, but due to my post-processing talents and painterly eye, he has been kind enough to include them all.

As a serious photographer I have only shot digital. I currently use a Canon 5D Mark III with a variety of lenses. I edit my photos in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom using a variety of plugins. Most of my images are processed in High Dynamic Range, which is a technique of using special software to blend multiple exposures of the the same image. The results provide more detail, shadows and highlights, which at times can give an illustrated look. This process works extremely well on ghost signs, their text faded to near-obscurity, as it brings out detail not seen in a normal photograph.

Thanks for your interest and enjoy, Ferd

Mound City Buggy Co. N. Broadway St. Louis 2013

A large, loquacious sign wall located just north of downtown, this one reflects the changing times in transportation—from making horse-drawn buggies to making pistons for early automobiles. By 1900, the Mound City Buggy and Auto Co. had offices variously located at 2007 Locust Street and on S. Broadway between Papin and Chouteau. The extant building on N. Broadway, pictured here, must have been the companys manufacturing plant.

Crescent Planing Mill Co. North 9th Street St. Louis 2013

Due to a downturn in the construction industry, Crescent Planing closed its doors in the spring of 2012, after being in business 122 years. The building is now for sale.

Central Waste Material Co. N. Broadway St. Louis 2013

Central Waste Material is currently in the business of scrap metal. They sort, process and resell all manner of brass, copper, steel, iron and aluminum.

Swaine Manufacturing OFallon Street St. Louis 2013

Swaine Manufacturing is located just north of the Edward Jones Dome. In 1897, when the company was located at 207 Chestnut Street, Fred J. Swaine was making presses and sheet metal tools. Their punch press line was acquired by Alva Allen Industries in 1963.

Cass Ave. near 14th Street St. Louis 2013

Why Not Earn 3% On Your Savings? This blighted building was likely a Savings Loan in its glory days, and later converted to a Chop Suey joint. Both enterprises are long gone.

Standard Stamping Co. N. Broadway St. Louis 2013

This long, four-story building with beautiful arched brick windows once housed the Standard Stamping Company, Biederman Furniture Company, and the American Surplus Warehouse.

Falstaff Brewery N. 20th Street St. Louis 2013

Editors Note. This is what the very informative website Built St. Louis has to say about the commercial buildings in this part of St. Louis: North of downtown, Broadway runs past a wide variety of industrial and warehousing buildings dating from the turn of the century. Interspersed between them are increasingly rare surviving residential buildings, holdouts from this areas history as an integral part of the Old North St. Louis and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Interstate 70 effectively bisected these neighborhoods in the 1960s, to the point that the original boundaries of Old North are no longer commonly counted as part of the neighborhood.

Vess Neon Bottle OFallon Street St. Louis 2013

For decades this giant replica of a family-size Vess Soda Bottle stood at the bus stop at Hampton and Gravois, in South St. Louis. It was constructed by Treesh Neon Sign Company, East St. Louis, Illinois for the Vess Bottling Company of St. Louis. In 1953, it was believed to be the largest, revolving, lighted bottle in the world. At night it was lit by more than 600 lineal feet of neon tubing. In 1989, after the bottle had been found in storage, it was re-erected at 520 O´Fallon. It is mounted on a pole similar to the original, but no longer rotates. Once again, history repeats itself; the sign has fallen into disrepair.

London Ghost Signs Let me introduce a colleague and friend from across the pond. Sam Roberts has not only done groundbreaking work in the documentation of wall signs throughout the UK, he has induced an intrepid band of wall sign enthusiasts, cameras at the ready, to help him in his quest to create a comprehensive survey of these fading and charming ads, hidden in plain sight, as Sam likes to say. Take a look at ghostsigns.co.uk.com and you will agree that his efforts are nothing less than breathtaking in scope. If that isnt enough then follow the link on The Painted Ad home page to one of Sams videos, titled Ghost Signs: Booze and Fags. Fags being Brit slang for cigs, squares, smokes, coffin nails, butts, etc. If ever youre in London, think about signing up for one of Sams Ghost Sign Walking Tours Cheers, Wm. Stage

Sam was kind enough to provide the following images along with accompanying captions as well as this short introduction:

Since noticing my first ghostsign in London, UK, in 2006 my interest has grown into a deep fascination, some might say obsession. My work has developed over this time with the most significant output being the History of Advertising Trust Ghostsigns Archive. This brought together dozens of photographers to capture almost 1,000 locations across the UK and Ireland. The archive continues to grow, as does the number of articles and pieces of research on the Ghostsigns blog which has now been running for over six years.

More recently I have published the first Ghostsigns calendar and am now running walking tours for visitors to London. These allow people to see ghostsigns in the flesh which is how they were always meant to be viewed.

For me, ghostsigns are pieces of local, social, advertising and craft history, fading each day, and often hidden in plain sight. My work is directed towards raising their profile and, hopefully, their perceived value in the eyes of the property owners who ultimately decide their fate. I do this through photography, research, archiving, writing and publishing. I continue to enjoy the surprises that come through this work, most recently the first mirrored ghostsign that Ive ever seen.

Courage Beer Redcross Street London SE1

This sign is positioned for high visibility from railway tracks coming out of London Bridge Station. The building was recently bought for 3 million pounds, making this one of the worlds priciest ghost signs. When in London and visiting certain grand old pubs, Americans, in particular, enjoy calling out to the bartender, Give me a glass of Courage.

Daren Bread Stoke Newington Church Street London N16

What remains of this sign was protected for many years by another sign mounted on the wall. It is an example of privilege advertising with the bakers name, seen near the top, likely Raleighs.

Warings / Wilton Factories Shepperton Road London N1

Located on the former factory, this is quite a large one for the UK.

Deane Co. Chemists The Pavement London SW4

This large sign may have been painted in the last 20 years or so given its appearance. The chimney pots seen at the roofline add to the charm of the sign. And yes, The Pavement is the actual name of the road where the ad is found.

S. Errington Furniture Dulwich Road London SE24

The missing word on the bottom line would be Exchanged.

Redferns Rubber Heels Grant Street London N1

The script along the bottom is the companys slogan, Makes Walking A Pleasure. This sign was revealed in its entirety after some more recent painted advertising was cleaned off the building during renovation.

Black Cat Cigarettes Dingley Road London EC1

The Carreras Tobacco Co. introduced Black Cat in 1904 as one of the first machine-made cigarettes made in Britain. The brand was also instrumental in early cigarette promotions, which have a rich and prolific history in that country. Upon purchase, smokers were given a free stamp album. Stamps were found in every pack of Black Cat and small fortunes were offered for the best completed albums. In this ad, we see that you can buy 10 for 6d, which is six old English pence.

Recent Finds

Here are some new wall sign discoveries in my travels in Missouri and Illinois during this Year of Our Lord 2013. Some are old ghosts and some newly exposed. Comments welcome.

_hester _owell _lothier Red Bud, IL 2013

Intriguing sign on the side of a health food on Main Street Red Bud. As one may see, the older brick ad has been saved and actually framed against an application of new brick. However, the first letters of the three words have been omitted in the process. Its a safe bet that the first name is Chester and he was a Clothier, but the surname? It may have been Lowell, Powell, Dowell, or even Howell. The signs painter signed his named McMullen; perhaps he knows.

Monogram Whiskey Kansas City, MO 2013

Large wall sign in downtown KC executed and likely still maintained by Arbuckle Signs. The Rieger Hotel opened in 1915 and was home to traveling salesmen, railroad workers, and assorted characters during Kansas Citys formative years. Note that the distiller of Monogram Whiskey has the same surname as the hotel.

Lee Louise Town Country Restaurant
Cobden, IL 2013

Cobden is an old-timey railroad town in Southern Illinois and Coca Cola certainly dominates this corner with three different types of signage.

3-V Cola Smithton, IL 2013

Re-do of an older ad on the side of Mueths Tavern in the hamlet of Smithton. The retro sign was executed in July 2011 by Courtney Louveau and Olivia von Boker. The 3 Vs stood for vim, vigor and vitality. The cola was the first to come in a 16-ounce bottle and thus the slogan, You Get a Third More.

Hyde Park Beer South St. Louis 2013

Another reveal at the corner of Morganford and Juniata just south of Tower Grove Park. This is the fifth sign for Hyde Park Beer in the City of St. Louis of which I am aware.The brewery, located in the Hyde Park neighborhood in North St. Louis, operated from 1876 to 1958. The beers slogan: Seldom Equaled, Never Excelled.

Otto Speichingers Tavern Millstadt, IL 2013

Well-preserved west-facing sign located at E. Washington and S. Breese in bucolic Millstadt. Its only slightly odd that a soft drink company would pay for advertising on a tavern. The tavern still operates with a popular fish fry stand on the outdoor patio; however, the sound of blasting pins is no longer heard in the 4-lane bowling alley upstairs.

Poke-A-Dot Lounge South St. Louis 2013

Old saloon sign exposed at the corner of Jefferson and Cherokee sometime in October, 2013. Note the pile of clay shingles [or whatever theyre called] up against the building where they have been chipped off the facade.

Multi-layered Sign Cherokee Street South St. Louis 2013

Large, old sign with several ads jumbled up and run together, although nothing is legible except the word Chew at the top of the wall. When I figure this one out I will let you know.

Detail, Multi-Layered Sign Cherokee Street South St. Louis 2013 3-Dimensional Business Cards

The brick wall was and still is the ideal location for a business owner to tell the world his name and trade. Throughout the City of St. Louis, one may still see evidence of this most basic and succinct form of advertising.

Undertaker Embalmer
Manchester Ave. So. St. Louis ca. 1980

Partly obscured sign on second story of building in what is now called The Grove. Who was the undertaker? Only his customers know, and that secret has gone to the grave with them. Photoshop enhanced by Robert Ferd Frank in 2011.

J. Sellmann Tailor
Potomac Ave. at Grace So. St. Louis 1979

Many small businesses such as this tailor shop had their names painted on the sides of their buildings, the merchant simply wanting to proclaim his existence. Think of them as large-scale, three-dimensional business cards.

Schacht Cook Horseshoers

2127 Cass Ave. No. St. Louis 1980

The building long gone in 2013, not much is known about this particular farrier on the near north side.

G. Morman Merchant Tailor Draper

Martin Luther King at Jefferson St. Louis 1980

Draper is an antiquated term for a wholesaler or retailer of cloth, mainly for clothing. A draper may also operate as a haberdasher. Drapers were a once-prominent trade guild. Rather arbitrarily, I am dating this sign ca. 1912.

Dry Goods Hosiery

Bates Ave, at I-55 So. St Louis 1980

This unidentified former store seems to have been a mercantile that offered sewing services. Signs such as this cause one to ponder times past when people actually went to a shop to have their buttons covered.

Steve Gilmore Plumber

Jefferson at Pestalozzi So. St. Louis 2013

Leaky faucets, stopped-up drains, broken spigots Gilmore the Plumber at your service.

Hats, Shoes and Overalls

Hats and shoes have always been staples of the St. Louis economy. Indeed, the old expression about the St. Louis Browns was, “First in shoes, first in booze, and last in the American League.” What is now The Washington Avenue Historic District, commonly called “the Loft District”—an area bounded by Delmar Avenue to the north, Locust Street to the south, 8th Street on the east and 18th Street on the west—was once known as the Garment District. According to the civic organization Downtown St. Louis, “From the late 19th century until the end of World War II, the St. Louis Garment District was second only to New York as an American center for fashion design and clothing manufacturing.” Today, most of the historic warehouses and commercial buildings along Washington Avenue—large multistory edifices of brick and stone construction with names like The Knickerbocker, Bee Hat, and International Shoe—have been renovated into contemporary lofts, bars and restaurants, and retail shops. Yet, evidence of these former shops, warehouses and factories, in the form of signage, still remains.

King Bee Hats / Wrigleys Spearmint Pepsin Gum
1709 Washington Avenue – Loft District 2011
Photo: Robert Ferd Frank

Likely the largest existing wall sign in St. Louis, this beauty sits on the west side of what was originally the King-Brinsmade Mercantile Company and is now the King Bee Lofts. Several fading ads adorn the vast brick face, some of them partially overlapping others, having been painted at different times. From top to bottom,ad copy reads “King Bee Hats – King-Brinsmade Merc. Co.” “Wrigleys Spearmint Pepsin Gum – Trade Mark Registered – The Flavor Lasts” and, within the pointing arrow, “Buettners – Seventh and Washington – Home Furnishings – Arrow Stamps.” To the right of Buettners is a barely legible ad for “Anti-Kamnia Tablets – Ask For A-K Tablets.” For chronological reference, the Anti-Kamnia Chemical Company made its appearance around 1890 in St. Louis. The trademark was registered that year, but the codeine-laced medicine for treating “Worry” [nervousness] was never patented. The company marketed its product aggressively, sending advertising postcards and samples to doctors and other possible customers. During the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis Anti-Kamnia was still going strong, but was to virtually collapse with the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Bill of 1906.

Hats 49 Cents
North St. Louis 1987

Found on the side of a home on a quiet side street, here is an example where the picture overwhelms the ad copy. It looks to be a fedora and whenever it was that a decent [we hope] hat cost 49 cents is when this sign dates to.

Allen Market Lane Apartments / Browns Five Star Mark
12th and Russell – Soulard

Wow! Shoes and hats made in the same building, but at different times. Known affectionately as the Mexican Hat Factory due to the sombreros made by the International Hat Factory in the 1950s, this four-story brick building was built in 1904 to house a division of the Brown Shoe Co. Purchased in 1980 by developers McCormack Baron Salazar, the old factory was converted to more than 100 affordable apartments available to seniors. This sign, and another one identical to it, were commissioned by Brown Shoe and probably date to a time before 1910.

Red Diamond Overalls
Lemp at Crittenden – Benton Park 1986

I photographed this sign in the 1980s and again 30 years later when the Knopf Market was long gone. It is a double ad, one for Red Diamond Overalls, once made here in St. Louis, and whose delightful slogan was “The Man who wears Red Diamonds wears a smile that wont come off.” The other sign lettered on this wall, and taking up far less space, says only “Lemp Leader Sells.” I can find nothing on this product, and even Vincent Hromadka, grocer-owner at nearby Vincents Market for the last 50 years, hadnt heard of it. The building sits on the corner of Lemp and Crittenden, not far from the former Lemp Brewery, so it could be a variety of beer. Or maybe not.

Red Diamond Overalls Advertising Cover
Handsome advertising cover postmarked April 29, 1913 when a stamp was but 2 cents.

Cobbler Shop
Cherokee Row South St. Louis 2011
Vestige of an old sign on the brick face of what is now a photography studio. On the other side of the door a similar sign reads Shoe Repairing While U Wait.

A Tale Of Two Feed Mills

OK Hatchery / Hay Grain Flour and Feed

Kirkwood, Missouri 2011

Stripping paint from this building at 111 W. Argonne Drive, near the Kirkwood train station, revealed vintage commercial signs: Coulter Feed Co. with the Purina Checkerboard pattern and a Bull Durham Tobacco sign on the side. The building dates to 1912 and was built as a feed and grain operation with a drive-through doorway in the center for wagons . When architectural illustrator Bob Whitesitt bought the building in 1987, he decided to “take it back to the red brick.” He hired Galati Building Cleaning and what looked at first to be a routine job turned into a restoration project. “There were six signs over the Bull Durham,” said Whitesitt. “Most of it was painted on with enamel so the reds and blacks came off with the application of Prosilco, but the whites stayed because they were done with lead-based paint. The difficulty was in deciding how far to go with it. Each time wed see something new wed have to decide whether to stop or keep on going. But when we got to the Bull Durham [sign] I said Stop!”

Rolling Ridge Nursery / Henry Schultz Feed Co.

Old Webster – Webster Groves, Missouri 2012

The trademark Purina Checkerboard design, around for more than a century now, is instantly recognizable on the wall of this former feed store on N. Gore in Old Webster. The information within the checkerboard is slightly varied in two locations: the south face and west face of the building. Both areas indicate the name of the business: Hy. Schultz Feed Co [Hy. being a shortened form of Henry]. In addition, the south facing sign reads “HORSE DAIRY POULTRY,” while the west facing sign says “FEEDS IN CHECKERBOARD BAGS.” Below and outside of the sign proper is the name, Commercial Sign Co., along with something one rarely, if ever, sees on a wall sign and that is a record of the exact date the sign was painted: “10-9-36.”

Built in 1892, the structure has always been either a feed store or a nursery. Like the OK Hatchery, this building also had a drive-through doorway in the center for wagons. Henry Schultz ran it as a feed store until 1953, at which time he sold it to his employees, and it has been under one ownership as Rolling Ridge Nursery since 1959. The signs were exposed in the 1980s when the building was being worked on. This generated attention and before long the Webster Groves Historic Preservation Commission weighed in: Because it was historic and in an historic district, the sign was not to be obliterated or altered in any way. Of course, the owners of Rolling Ridge Nursery didnt want to paint over the old signs—Henry Schultz being a relative and all—but they didnt anticipate the restrictions brought on by their discovery. Zoning ordinances say a business is allowed only so much signage, and this old sign from the previous business counted toward their square-foot allowance. Thus, they had to accept a smaller-than-desired Rolling Ridge Nursery sign, and they had to refrain from making certain planned structural changes. Said Rolling Ridge VP Don Baumstark, “We even had to fight [the Historic Preservation Commission] to be allowed to put in our electric sign.” But Baumstarks tone is not rueful. Despite the imposed restrictions or perhaps partly because of them, the charming nursery and garden shop has been going strong for 53 years and counting.

Weisert Tobacco Co.

There was a time when Tobacco Road ran through St. Louis. Toward the end of the 19th century, St. Louis was the largest processor of pipe and chewing tobacco in the United States. According to an industry periodical, Connortons Tobacco Brand Directory of the United States, St. Louis was number one in tobacco-producing cities for the year 1887 with an output of 40,284,675 pounds. The runner up was Jersey City, followed by Baltimore, Chicago, and Durham, NC. Local manufacturers and processors responsible for this superlative included but were not limited to the John Weisert Tobacco Company, the Christian Peper Tobacco Company, the Liggett Myers Tobacco Company and its predecessor, the Drummond Tobacco Company.
The John Weisert Tobacco Company, located at 1120 to 1132 South 6th Street, produced smoking tobacco and plug cut under scores of labels including Orphan Boy, Big John, Granulated 51, Harp Plug Cut —“Smoke or Chew”—and the felicitously-named Joysmoke, sold as tobacco for cigarettes, cigars or the pipe. Founded in the 1850s, Weisert Tobacco operated until the late 1980s under the helm of the founders great-grandson, Walter Weisert, and until the end was the last remaining tobacco company in Missouri. The once-flourishing Christian Peper Tobacco Company, founded 1852, had their offices at 707 North First Street in Lacledes Landing. This building, now the offices of the Metro Transit System, once stored the leaf for the company. Its plank floors were slanted so workers could roll large barrels of cured tobacco down toward waiting cargo ships on the Mississippi. In 1906, according to the Lacledes Landing website, the company produced a series of racy cards for their Turkish brand Kadee Cigarettes, one of the first uses of artistically-posed nude models for advertising.
Industry giant Liggett Myers had its massive processing plant at 4121 Folsom. For more than 100 years L M made chewing tobacco, the flagship brand being Star Tobacco. The company also made many brands of cigarettes, including the popular Chesterfield, which they made from 1911 until 1998 at which time Phillip Morris took over. But Chesterfield cigarettes were around long before 1911. The Drummond Tobacco Company of St. Louis began making Chesterfield cigarettes in 1873. James T. Drummond was a successful plug tobacco manufacturer who had introduced Chesterfield, Cannon, and Drum cigarettes as a sideline. – Wm. Stage

Big John – 1120 S. 6th Street

In the year 2013, this wall sign has been around for at least a century, although I just recently noticed it driving along I-55 just south of Downtown St. Louis. Only the two words, but immediately I knew what it was—a pitch for Weisert Tobacco Companys finest product. In the 1980s, I had done a magazine feature on tobacco manufacturing here and during that time I got to know Walter Weisert, a good man, partial to bib overalls, with an appreciation for the heritage hed inherited. By that time, Weisert Tobacco, around since the 1850s, was the last remaining tobacco manufacturer in Missouri. Walter was painfully aware that his operation was dying, going the way of the streetcar and the icepick; he was down to one cigar maker, an old man with a constant half-chewed stogie jutting from his mug. The end was hastened one day when Walter fell while working on one of the floors and was seriously injured. Already up in age, he could no longer get around and that was the end of Weisert Tobacco.
Big John photo by Margaret Stage

Big John Tobacco Label circa 1920s – collection of Wm. Stage

Lonnie Tettaton Walldog

Lonnie Tettaton is the maestro of wall signs in St. Louis, whether that sign is done from scratch, using either clients or his own design, or it is one to be carefully “touched up”such as the historic Bull Durham Tobacco sign in downtown Collinsville, Illinois. Every journeyman signpainter has a helper, and Lonnie started his career as a helper at Kirn Sign Company in 1958. After three years at Kirn he struck out on his own and he has been painting signs all over the metro area ever since. Some of these signs are decidedly artistic and have either a retro-look such as the highly-visible Lemp Mansion wall mural seen on I-55 South, or done in the style of trompe loeil [“trick of the eye”] such as the large, mimetic Greek architecture mural at 7th and Locust Streets downtown. In the past, Tettaton has run a School of Lettering Design, and his Nutwood Publishing Company has put out books on signs and sign making. His life as a signpainter is detailed in a memoir, The Great St. Louis Adventure.

A few years back, Lonnie lost a leg due to a fall from a ladder followed by complications from a series of failed operations. Yet, he remained active. Although his climbing-up-on-scaffolding days were over, he continued to take on sign work with the help of another signpainter. Now all that has changed. In November, 2012, when I phoned him for this interview he answered the call from a hospital bed. He had broken his hip, he said, offering the perfectly plausible explanation that “its hard to keep your balance with only one leg.” In a few months Lonnie will turn 76. We wish him a speedy recovery and the chance to create many more signs. Meanwhile, here is a glimpse of his early life as a walldog.

“I was just out of high school, selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias, which wasnt too good, and then I had a chance to get on as a helper at Kirn Sign. I had always been interested in lettering and signs and posters. I was taking commercial art at Hadley Tech [Hadley Technical High School], and I would ride the street car to school down Grand Avenue. All the storefronts had signs, and I thought that would be a good thing to get into.
“Helpers did a lot of the menial work. We coated billboards before they would be painted. We would clean billboards and neon signs, paint this or that. Kirn Sign made a lot of patterns for neon signs and plastic signs and your lettering had to be perfect. If a customer was going to spend a lot of money for a nice sign then you cant have any mistakes in the lettering. You had to make it look professional. Later on, after Id been there a while, I was making paper patterns for all those signs.

“After three years I broke away and went off on my own. I went out on the streets hustling for business. I picked up some billboard work and anything else that came my way. I was hungry for  experience. You take a job and then you figure out how to do it. I had some tough ones, but I couldnt quit. There were times I had to think about it and wonder what am I doing this for, but then I would just go ahead and hit it straight on and figure out how to work it.”

Every novice needs a mentor.

“There was an old-time signpainter, E.C. Matthews, who had his shop on Cass Avenue. I would go by there and ask questions and he threw me a little job once in a while. Matthews was a legend among the old school signpainters. He had even written books on the subject that many of us carried around. One was called Signs Up-To-Now 18 Easy Lessons and another was How To Paint Signs and Sho Cards. I got to  know him and listened to his stories. He had a lot of stories to tell. He had three rooms in a four story building there on Cass. He had a coal stove in the front room and he would build a nice fire in the morning and stoke it well and it would last him all day long. That front room was his studio. He slept in the middle room and the back room was for storage. He would eat most of his meals out. He didnt have a telephone. If someone wanted a sign painted they would drop by and catch him in. People brought trucks and there were all kinds of signs to be painted. Whatever came along, he would do it. He would letter their trucks out on the street on in the backyard.”

“He liked to hang around the shop and he was reluctant to take on a job that would take him away from there. He taught me gold leaf, and heres a story about that. Back then, I would take any work I could get, whether or not I was confident that I could actually do it. I mean, there were so many different types of signs. Well, I got this contract to do a gold leaf  job at a supply company on 23rd and Washington. They wanted their emblem in the middle of this nice, big window along with a couple of  gold stripes and some lettering. See, Id just heard about gold leaf, Id never done it, and I went to  Matthews and told him that I got this job and if he would help me I would split the pay with him. It was a snowy, slushy day and he said, You arent going to get me out on a day like this, but Ill show you how to do it. So he goes through all of the steps of gold leaf preparation. He got out the gelatin capsule and he boiled it in water, then he strained it off into a little jar. We used a window from his studio. He made a pattern and put it on the outside of the window, then he applied the gold leaf and went to lettering—you know, you do it in reverse, the letters.

“So, while I had it it fresh on my mind, I left his shop and went to the jobsite. Like I said, it was a nasty, dreary day and if the windows are cold theyre going to sweat and the gold leaf may not stick. Well, I took a piece of cardboard and fanned the window to keep it from sweating up, and when it dried I went ahead and did the lettering like he showed me. The next day I went back to see him and he asked how did the gold leaf job turn out. I said that it turned out pretty good. He said, Well, its a good thing that you didnt know you couldnt do that, because when the weathers bad like that, its bad for gold leaf, too.  So, its a good thing that I didnt know what I was doing, because if I did Id have probably never tried to do it.”

Where was your studio at that time?

“It was in the basement of an old building on 13th and Monroe. North City. It had been a coal shed and I painted signs there. I was getting to be pretty independent.”

You had your own equipment?

“Yeah, when I first went into business I had to get a stage and the falls and the ladders and so forth. I had a truck, an old Chevy pickup—an older model, maybe a 48.”

Which job early on really helped you turn the corner?

“Marx Hardware on 14th Street. Its still there today, and run by Steve Marx. But this was 55 years ago, when Steves grandfather had it. He had a sign that had been there for decades so it needed to be repainted. Then there was Als Auto Sales on North Florissant and Warren, not far from Marx Hardware. Al had a big wall up the street and he wanted a sign on it. A friend and I solicited him for the job, but he stopped short of hiring us. Al was one of those skeptical old Germans and he just wasnt sure about us. Then we told him that we were working just over on 14th so he went over and looked at what wed done and that did the trick. Al said that if anybody could do a job for old man Marx, then they were good enough for him.”

And all this time you are learning as you go?

“Yes, I am learning as I go. I made a lot of wall signs and at one time I had at least one sign on every block downtown. Back when it was a more commercial area with lots of stores and shops. There was plenty of business going on. It was a good thing, too, because I had gotten married and had a little baby.”

What preparation would you make in anticipation of a big job?

“After talking with the customer and getting a sense of what he wanted, I would go back to the shop and make a scaled sketch of what the sign was going to look like. Sometimes there was a pattern or a logo that the customer was particular about and Id incorporate that into the layout. Then Id go back to the customer, show him the sketch, exactly how the sign would look, and give him the price. If he liked it, then I got the job. Basically, I worked from a small two-dimensional scaled sketch to create the finished product.”

Did you have mechanical drawing in high school?
“No, I learned to do layouts while working at Kirn Sign Company. I learned to use a scale ruler and I learned a lot of ways that layouts may be done. That was good experience for me there, because those layouts had to be right on the money.”

You were feeling pretty good about yourself back then.

“Oh yeah, but it was a struggle. At one point I quit working for myself and went to Righty Electric over in Granite City, Illinois. They were doing neon and plastic signs as well as electrical contracts. We lived there in Granite City, just me and my wife and the baby in a little two-room flat. That fall, I got laid off. We took the last check and went to the Ozarks, had a little vacation. When we came back, I hit the streets, beating the bushes. Id go out by day and hustle up work and at night, any work I might have gotten, Id sketch it out on the kitchen table and it was just enough to skim by.

“My first big job back then was Merrill Moving and Storage, on Grand Avenue near Page. It was a huge sign that stretched across the building about 100 feet and it was about 40 to 50 feet high. The sign said Merrill Moving and Storage and it was going to be lettered within a big arch. I had talked the owner into including that arch as part of the sign, but when I got up there I thought, How in the hell am I going to put an arch all across that big building with 10 foot high letters?  Now, Im no whiz at geometry and Im not very good at math, but I figured it out. I got a center line and made an arch and it turned out pretty good.”

Do you recall what you were paid for that job?

“It was fourteen hundred back in 1959 or 1960. I remember I went to meet the guy but just before I had burnt the side of my neck, spilled some scalding water on it. I get there and I am sweating and uncomfortable in his office. He asked me how much is it and I said, Well, ah, about fourteen hundred. And he said, Well, what is it—fourteen hundred or something else? And I said Yeah, it is fourteen hundred. I learned right there that when you are giving someone the price, you dont hesitate, here is the price. Write it on a slip of paper and hand it to him. Dont be wishy washy thinking they wont accept it or think that they will beat you down.”
You had some close calls while on the job.

“Oh, yeah, I had several of them. One time I had a rope break on the side of a water tower, a bubble type tank out in Lake St. Louis [St. Charles County]. This painting contractor wanted a Fleur De Lis and letters reading Lake St. Louis on the water tower for everyone to see. He had a couple of guys go up and try to paint it and they totally screwed it up, so he came to me to straighten it out and finish it. I agreed, but when I got to the job I saw that his equipment was really old. He had a little half-inch rope and I told him that I dont like the looks of that rope, but I went up and did the job anyway. Id just gotten it finished and they were letting me down when that damn rope broke. We were using double-single rope pulleys and I was hitched up to that. I was choking all four lines when the rope broke. There was one big jerk and I dropped about 10 feet before I squeezed all of them together with both hands, the ropes. That slowed it down so I was able to make it down to the ground. They [the ground crew] were more nervous than I was. I figured I better go back up and take the rest of the rigging down, because it was bothering me. I thought maybe I would be afraid to climb again.”

But climb you did and heights became a part of your existence. Eventually, though, the odds caught up with you.

“I broke my feet and ankle. I was out at Parkway High School, doing graphics on a wall. I was up on a step-ladder, a 10 footer, and I slipped and fell and landed flat on my feet. I didnt try to get up, I knew it was bad. Anyway, I went to the hospital and they did surgery and put plates and pins in my feet. About three years ago [2009] it really started bothering me, all of that stuff had started working loose. So, they operated again and put a rod in my shin bone. They removed some of the old hardware and put in new plates and pins. I got a staph infection, which was resistant to everything they tried. The staph got into the bone and they had to take some bone out. After more operations, six I think, taking out meat and bone and metal, they couldnt get rid of that staph and so they amputated from the knee down.

“It was a dangerous and high work I did for all of those years and never got hurt. Then I got hurt while on a step-ladder.”

Now, youre back in the hospital.

“Yes, with only one leg its hard to keep your balance, so I fell and broke my hip. I was doing a window job out in Maplewood. Its funny because the last couple years sign work had dropped off and then someone put my work on the Internet and all of a sudden Im getting calls from people looking for hand lettering on windows, something I could do without being on a tall ladder, and now Im screwed because of the fall.”

It is tough luck, but somehow youll overcome it. Last question: Think back, what was your reaction the first time you were called a walldog?

“Well, it fits because I like to get out and work on the walls. The big sign companies had two sets of workers, the commercial sign people usually got to stay inside the shop and do the clean, intricate work and the other bunch theyd send out on the dirty old walls. Theyd get onto the rigging, climb over the firewall, slap paint everywhere—theyd go out on any job in all kinds of weather, they didnt care. They called them walldogs. No, I didnt mind being called a walldog, not at all. At least I knew I was in good company.”

Walldogs

“They were extremely fast with these big walls, but then many did nothing but walls. They had tricks the younger people hadnt picked up.”
—Gus Holthaus, signpainter, Cincinnati

They were a rugged, resourceful lot with a dedication to the craft bordering on monomania  They painted signs on walls, great and small, and they worked like dogs. So they were called wall dogs. As a group they embodied an eclectic mix of skills often associated with the draftsman, the chemist, the artist and even the acrobat.
In the first half of the 20th century wall dogs were legion. Probably the majority were employed by the major sign companies of the day—General Outdoor Advertising Co., the Thomas Cusack Co., the P.H. Morton Co., and the O. J. Gude Co. One contingent worked the brick-walled cities, while another ranged the countryside in search of virgin barns and prime walls in small towns.
The late Art Hunn was a veteran of many excursions into the American hinterland of the 1920s, when he made a living painting wall signs and bulletins. In 1983, I spoke with Art Hunn, then 82 and an administrator with the Painters District Council No. 2 here in St. Louis. His recollection of life as a signpainter stretched back seven decades to that day in 1916 when he signed on as an apprentice with the Thomas Cusask Co.
“Each spring as many as fifteen two-man crews would go out on the road three or four months at a time,” Art began. “Wed go into a town, and back then the Williams Company had lots of gas and oil signs leased, so wed paint bulletins on filling station lots.” By 1924, Hunn and his partner were driving around Illinois, Missouri and Iowa in an “old broken-down Dodge,” punctuating scenic vistas with signs of the times—Bull Durham Tobacco, Pillsbury Flour, and Coca-Cola. Each crew, said Art, was expected to complete a sign a day.
And pay? It wasnt enough, said Art. But there was always moonlighting. “A few of us,” he offered, would pick up a little extra money doing what we called snaps, just  a custom job on our own time. It was usually something like painting the name of a town on a water tank.”

While their brethren roamed the countryside, the city wall dogs worked the endless canvas of their domain. Some of these earlier freewheeling painters established a reputation as a colorful lot—literally an figuratively. Active signpainters were easily distinguished by their apparel, daubed with colorful paints, leftovers from the days work. Ive heard that some outdoor men, before boarding the streetcar for home, would coat their paint-splattered shoes with black paint. A mans got to have some pride.
Then there was drink. Libation of the alcoholic sort. Maybe it was from mixing paint using turpentine and lacquers, spirits in their own right, or maybe the painters were justly parched from an honest days labor, but somehow the signpainter came to be regarded as a tippler. There is the stereotypic notion of the signpainter on a scaffold, a fitch in his hand and a pint in his back pocket. For every sign man who says this is hogwash, there is another who will slyly wink.

While on assignment for Signs of the Times in 1983, I tracked down a handful of wall dogs, some retired and some still at it. I visited the Foster Kleiser Company in South Chicago, at the time the largest outdoor advertising company in the country. There I met journeyman Tom Cavanaugh, Ed Litwin and Jim Chicouris. I was allowed to watch them work, but the actual story-telling came after they clocked out, at a nearby diner.
“We are very hardworking,” allowed Chicouris,. “Once we had a time consultant follow us around and he couldnt believe how fast and efficient we worked. We would go to the [Chicago] Loop on Sundays, four to six of us on a crew. Sundays there were no pedestrians or traffic to worry about. Wed finish a he wall in a day.”
With the typical wall job measuring about 400 square feet [20 by 20] and involving letters six to eight feet tall, the sign men had to be fast. If they werent they were sacked. Said Ed Litwin, then a 25-year veteran of the trade, “There was always a lot of slappin—slapping the paint on. The sign companies wanted fast work. It was always push, push, go, go.”

The guys joked about Slappy Hooper, the signpainters version of Paul Bunyan. Slappy once had a wall job so big that it took a gallon of paint just to dot the “i.” And Slappy used skyhooks to hold up his scaffold so he could paint ads on clouds. But of all the living, breathing bigger-than-life signpainters I heard of, Bat Smith of Chicago was the most colorful. Bat was the epitome of a wall dog—crusty in appearance, salty in his language. Like any normal painter, Bat swore vehemently when things went wrong, as they often did. But those curses and epithets didnt offend too many ears, because most of the time Bat worked so high that nobody heard him anyway.
Both of Bats legs had been broken, leaving him with a sort of waddling gait. Still, he worked the high scaffold, where for eight hours a day he was Lord of the Realm Below. However, Bat treated his subjects with disdain, for Bat chewed tobacco and, whether he was on the street or 20 stories above it, Bat spat as he pleased. One of Bats stunts was to slide apeman-fashion down the ropes and falls, either from the roof of a building to the scaffold below or from scaffold to street level. This was known as a “roof swing” and at one time was common practice among wall dogs.

Some companies paid higher wages for hazardous duty, working above, say, 100 feet and higher. High work could be safe or dangerous, depending on equipment or weather conditions. City streets with tall buildings can become wind tunnels and strong gusts caused scaffolds on high to pitch, sending uncovered paint all over the street below, raining on cars and pedestrians alike, and forcing the wall dog to cling for dear life. For the true wall dog, however, the higher he was, the better he liked it. “Some fellas just like to be up there with the birds,” Tom Cavanaugh put in. “Thats where they find peace of mind.”

Men such as Art Hunn and Tom Cavanaugh are members of an old school of sign painting, a school of hard knocks which awarded countless diplomas but whose alumni are increasingly harder to locate. Here in St. Louis, in the year 2012, I was able to speak to two former wall dogs, Jim Kargus and Lonnie Tettaton. Both were active signpainters from the 1950s forward, painting not just brick walls but billboards and barges,water towers and smokestacks, fences and barns; you-name-it, they painted a sign on it.

JIM KARGUS, WALLDOG    

Jim “Korky” Kargus painted signs of all kinds in St. Louis for 42 years. Starting in 1949, while in high school,  he began working for the family business, C. Kargus Signs. Both Jim and his older brother Bob learned the business from their father, Casper, a well-known sign artist in St. Louis. The brothers both served in the armed services, Jim in the Coast Guard and Bob in the Army, where he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. Upon discharge, both returned to St. Louis and to Kargus Signs and became partners when their father died. The company flourished for years, but when work slowed in the early 1960s Jim went to Piros Sign Company, where his talents with large-scale pictorial painting and lettering got him assigned to the high work and he became a bona fide walldog until his retirement in 1991. Piros Sign is still in operation today. Meanwhile, brother Bob kept Kargus Signs going until the early 1990s.

The C. Kargus Sign Company began in 1883 when Jims grandfather, Casper, opened a shop at 1541 S. Broadway. From there the shop moved to 10th Street and Allen Avenue, in Soulard, where the Kargus family also lived. At this time, in the 1920s, Kargus Signs kept their hand in virtually any kind of outdoor work, from wall signs to gold leaf window-lettering to house painting to tuckpointing. When Casper Sr. died, the running of the business fell to two brothers: Casper Jr., Jims dad, and Albert Kargus. Albert went into the house painting-tuckpointing end of it, while Casper Jr. honed in on signs. In 1933, with Prohibition behind and the breweries once again turning out the suds, Kargus Signs got the lucrative Anheuser-Busch account which kept them busy for years to come. Other major accounts included Quality Dairy, Clover Farms and City Ice Fuel.

Today, Jim Kargus, 83, lives in South County and enjoys a retirement punctuated by frequent visits from his many children and grandchildren. Like his mother, father and grandfather before him, and like many of the best pictorial signpainters of yore, Jim has always been drawn to art for arts sake. To be sure, having studied art at Washington University helped him in the practical business of making signs, but when not doing the commercial job he brings out the canvas to render landscapes and still lifes. He walks with the help of a cane and a leg brace due to a job-related fall on a river barge, an injury that nags but did not hinder his productivity. Jim still keeps his old, wooden, paint-splattered kit handy for lettering the occasional sign or show card as the need arises, parish festivals for example. I caught up with Jim on a cool, cloudy afternoon in November, 2012. He expressed surprise that after all these years anyone would care to interview him about his career as a signpainter.

“I was in high school when I started working with dad,” Jim recalled. “We got along real well. Hed have me clean brushes and other small jobs around the shop, and sometimes hed take me out on jobs. A lot of them [employees] couldnt do art, the picture work. Dad saw that I had some artistic talent and one day he said, How about you drawing the AB Eagle?  After that, I worked on the Budwesier flying eagle. As time went on we did Busch and Michelob signs, too. One day I was painting a beer bottle on side of tavern and making it look like there was sweat [condensation] on it. August [Busch] the Third stopped by and watched me work. Finally, he said, I see where you made a mistake—you got a runner. A runner is a drip that gets between the cracks of the brick and runs down where it shouldnt be. So I fixed it then and there, and he got back in his car and drove off.”

 The future wall dog became accustomed to heights at a tender age.     

“Downtown, near what is now the Poplar Street Bridge, used to be what they called the French Market. This place had a lot of large buildings, ten–twelve stories, which had various businesses, but mostly sewing and manufacturing, shirts and trousers and blouses—each floor was different. And the advertisements were on the brick between each floor. Dad was there a lot. One particular time, dad forgot his lunch. I told mom I could take it to him. So I went down there, dad was way up high on a stage, painting away. I crawled up the fire escape, went over to an open window, leaned out and gave him his lunch. And he said, You want to sit here with me?  I was just a kid, I said, Heck, yeah! So he pulled me through the window and we sat on the stage together had lunch. Then he had to go back to work so I went back through the window, down the fire escape, and back home.”

 Enough work to go around, but then

“My older brother, Bob, went in the service in 1944 and fought in the Battle of the Bulge [Dec 1944 – Jan 1945] where he was wounded pretty badly. One hand was all wired together, and there was shrapnel in his side. He was a mess when he came back. Bob couldnt do much lettering, but he did the decal work and he did the books while I would take care of the men, order materials, keep the trucks running and so forth. Dad would design the layouts. We had two wall crews and two window crews. There was a journeyman and a helper on each truck and we would send one truck up north and one down south, or west depending on where the jobs were. It didnt matter what truck I was on because I could do walls, windows, fences, pretty much everything. That was when the breweries were going great guns with advertising. We did the whole St. Louis area for Anheuser-Busch. Gray Sign had Griesedieck Beer and I think Simon Signs had Falstaff. At the time, my wife worked for Stag Brewery and we ended up doing some of that account—wall signs, fences, glass work, show cards, a lot of decal work. But then the work dwindled. Falstaff moved out, Stag moved to Illinois, Black Label went out East and then next thing you know there were only four of us. It got to the point where it wasnt paying for Bob and I to be together. Dad had said to me before he died, If anything happens with the shop where you cant go on together, you give it to Bob. Youve got four good limbs, your brother doesnt. So I packed up.

“I went to Piros Sign in 1963. Lou Brand and Larry Bumb were the owners. Larry once said if you ever need a job come on out. I took him up on that offer and I worked there until I retired, in 1991. Up until then, much of their work was sign erection. I started doing the wall work—walldog, thats what they called me—and the pictorials that went on those walls and billboards. Thats what Larry wanted me for, to paint hamburgers, cars, bottles of beer.”

Piros Signs did a brisk trade in maintaining billboards along the Interstates. There was a lot to do even before they started painting.  

“We worked halfway between here and Kansas City, doing 8 by10s and 10 by 20s, the old wooden billboards, for King Motels, Zephyr Petroleum, Fina Petroleum and Falstaff beer. We painted on site. Those old trucks were pretty sturdy and wed go off the road and into where the signs were. First wed take an ax and weed whackers and clear the brush away just to be able to get to the sign. And poison ivy was terrible out there, we caught that all the time. We had a system going, you had to if you want to make time. The first day  wed prep two or  three, scrape them, add a prime coat, get them ready. Next day, get the finishes [finishing coat of paint] up, bring your pattern work up and then start lettering, do pictures, whatever you had to do. You get done with one, you jump to the next one. If it was a large job youd leave your stage and scaffolding there overnight so you can come back the next morning and keep working. We were usually gone two days, maybe three, staying in motels and eating in greasy spoons along the way. It was interesting you got to meet different people and see different things along the way.”

 The Highway Beautification Act was enacted in 1966. This mandated that billboards will stand no closer than 660 feet from the highway. More than two football fields distant. How did this affect the business?

“Well the signs just got bigger and bigger and higher and higher. We ended up working, Id say over 100 feet, high enough to go over the bushes and trees and the signs themselves would span, oh, 20 by 40 to 20 by 60. And you would just use  fewer words because when youre moving at 60-70 miles per hour you dont have time to read. Its got to be a flash in your eye and it hits your brain, and thats it.”

Things were changing in the sign business. Lead-based paint discontinued, signs more distant, obligatory safety precautions.  OSHA came along and mandated the use of harnesses.

“Many years we worked the high walls without harnesses. You always had to make sure you walked on the outside edges of the scaffolding while you were up there working otherwise it would tip. And you usually had one maybe two ropes that dropped down from the top that youd hold on to when you were crossing back and forth from one another, and out in the center you usually had an extra rope hanging there, so that in case you lost your balance you had something to grab real quick. You always had to have a pipe or hook from the opposite side of the building that you tied to so that all your ropes had an extra safety line in case a fire wall pulled out or something. That way wed just fall maybe a foot or two before wed catch. Youve got to have some means of keeping you from falling off completely. And if you did fall, well, you just had to make sure you knew how to bounce [laughs].”

Still, accidents do happen.

“The only time I got hurt working was on a barge in the Mississippi River. We were over on the Illinois side, lettering a 4 by 40-foot sign on the side of this barge, and I was going to get more paint. I was going from one level to another when suddenly another barge pulled up and bumped us. I tripped over a guideline, fell eight feet, and landed on my back. I was out for 20 days, and eventually had to have two disks removed from my back. They also fitted me for a leg brace. The first one cracked and then they fitted me for a different one that was heavier so when I stood on the rungs of the ladder it wouldnt break. I climbed ladders and did all that work for 10 years after my injury.”

The buddy system worked well as long as you could find the right buddy. 

“At Piros there was a guy named Johnny Phillip. I would not go on a job without him. He was knowledgeable, a hard worker, he would never tire. We had to pull all our rigging up by hand and when we worked high he would check everything beforehand—our ropes to make sure they werent cut or worn, make sure the block and tackles were intact. Johnny would check all the equipment and so would I, after him, and never once did he say, Dont you trust me? I was thrilled to death he checked and it got done twice, because you never know when youre going to make a mistake.”

Piros Signs also specialized in lettering water towers and oil tanks. What was it like, being in such a lofty perch?

“Oh wed look out on the horizon and remark on how far we could see or maybe wed laugh about something the kids did at home, but I would say that up there your mind is never that far off. When you get up 75 feet to 100 feet or higher theres an updraft which lifts the scaffolding, and youre constantly looking over to make sure nothing got loose. Likewise, paint pots, wed tie them off so as not to spill in the wind and a lot of times youd hook smaller pots of paint on your belt, one color here and one there so you could paint with both hands. Johnny and I did the Pittsburgh Paint water tower down in Festus [a town south of St. Louis]. That structure was 230 feet top to bottom. We brought binoculars along. You get up on top of it at lunchtime, youd see the tip of the Gateway Arch, the light blinking, had to be at least 30 miles away … every time we worked over 100 feet we got extra pay. And it was a risk, it was dangerous, but I had seven at the table.”

Certainly you got some satisfaction from doing work that would be highly visible.
“When you look at a sketch the artist drew and you look up and the finished sign looks just like that sketch, you know you did your job right. And by the same token, you knew when you made a mistake.”
Were there many you had to redo?

“There were maybe two and those were spelling mistakes. You had a name like Dinning and maybe you got distracted and forgot that second I . So youve got to go back up there and coat out the NG and put the I in where it belongs. When that happened you got docked for your time, the additional time it took to correct the mistake. The helpers, most of them couldnt letter, they used to complain when they got docked [for the time it took to correct a mistake]. If its not their mistake I understand why, but when you send two men out its a team and if the journeyman makes a mistake they both are responsible. On the other hand, some of these helpers were experts at goofing off. We get a half-hour for lunch, these guysd take an hour or theyd go across the street to the tavern and meantime youre up there on the scaffolding waiting to get the job done. Sometimes we needed extra help and Larry, my boss, hed call the [union] hall to round up a couple guys and the hall would pick some guy that was already on my list. And Id say, No, dont send him. Hes no good, hes going to goof off. And you could hear the reaction on the other end of the phone—Damn that Kargus!”

Do you feel that as a walldog you got extra respect?

“Well, yeah, they used to say, Are you the guy that paints the big signs? Once in a while theyd give you an extra drink when youre having lunch or something like that. Theyd smile at you and kind of laugh and say that youre nuts for climbing around out there [laughs].”

How about the other signpainters—what did they think?

“Well, they werent prone to flattery. As far as the climbing part of it, theyd just shake their head and say, Youll never find me up there with the birds. Actually the people that got the most respect were the men who did the glass work, because it was a delicate and precise exercise and the lettering had to be done backwards on glass so that it could be read properly. That was top of the trade, those men were looked up to more than wall men were.”

Older Entries The Painted Ad: RELATED WEBSITES

New York City Wall Signs

Ghost Signs in United Kingdom

American Sign Museum
Cincinnati, OH

Society for Commercial Archeology
Madison, WI

Pan-American Pictorial Survey

VIDEOS

Here are some of our picks for must-see TV.

Booze and Fags: Ghost Signs in the UK

Only Fools & Horses: Ghost Signs in the UK

HEC TV Feature on St. Louis Wall Signs

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dec 10, 1989
Toledo Magazine
Fading Beauties: Painted signs can give us glimpses into the history and culture of our past.
byline Mary Manton White / photography Don Strayer

Dec. 27, 1989
The Kentucky Post
Urban Artwork of 'Walldogs' Slowly Fading
byline: Jack Hicks

May 14, 1994
New York Times METRO
Signs of Lost Times: Age Gives a Faded Glory to Old Advertisements Painted on the Sides of Building. byline Paul Goldberger / photographs Jack Manning

Feb 6, 2000
Peoria Journal-Star
Poetry of Gentle Decay: Lost Art of Painted Signs is Slowly Fading Away. byline Pam Adams / photographs Linda Henson

March 27, 2000
Moline Dispatch / Rock Island Argus
Fading Signs of Other Times byline Tory Brecht

March / April 2001
Preservation:The Magazine Of The National Trust For Historic Preservation
Writing On The Wall: The faded signs of decades-old advertisements hover high above the streets of Manhattan. byline Linda Cooper Bowen / photographs Sava Mitrovich

Jan 27, 2003
Baltimore Sun
If This Wall Could Talk. byline John Woestendiek / photographs Jed Kirschbaum

May 4, 2003
Houston Chronicle
Ghost Signs Bring Taste Of History To Buildings: Some Old Ads On Walls Are Being Preserved
byline Allan Turner / photographs Karl Stolleis

Sept 2007
Signs of the Times
Dogtown Reborn: Vintage Wall Signs Have Been Restored In This St. Louis Neighborhood byline Wm. Stage

May 14, 2009
The Courier – Lincoln, IL
“Ghost” Turns Up In Lincoln Alley

May 2012
Signs Of The Times
Art Meets Archaeology: A Collapsed Building Unearths an 1890s Wall Mural Story and Photos: Wm. Stage

BOOKS

Haas, Cynthia Lea, and Jeff Holder, Ghost Signs of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Press, 1997.

Russell, Laura, Colorado Wall Dogs: Ghost Signs Across Colorado, Second Edition, Simply Books, Ltd., 2006

Stage, Wm., Ghost Signs: Brick Wall Signs in America, Cincinnati, Ohio: ST Publications, 1989

Jump, Frank, Fading Ads of New York City, The History Press, 2011.

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