Ghost signs: Fading reminders of the past
On the streets of Schenectady, New York, Ron Ladouceur is "ghost hunting" in broad daylight, alongside an old brick wall. "We've got a couple of letters we can make out here, right?" he said. "There's the word 'service,' that's pretty clear. The brand name was here. This was probably an auto service center of some sort."
These faded advertisements, known as ghost signs, are all around us, often hiding in plain sight.
"It's very much a ghost," Ladouceur said. "It pops out, and all of the sudden, they start popping out from alleyways and other buildings, and you're like, Ah! You're haunted by them, and you have to go find more. It becomes an obsession."
Ladouceur is an adjunct professor of marketing at the University at Albany. For him, these brick walls are windows into the past. "The golden era of ghost signs is anywhere between about 1895 and the 1930s," he said. "It really coincides with the rise of national advertising."
While you can find faded signs for brands like Coca Cola, Ivory Soap, and Wrigley's gum, most ghosts promote companies, products and brands that died long ago. It's as if they have unfinished business. Some are barely decipherable – like a puzzle to be solved. "Absolutely, I mean a lot of them are almost unreadable," Ladouceur said. "Many of them have been painted in layers, because they were a good advertising spot, so people would paint over it with a new ad, new ad, new ad. And now they're fading in sequence."
Occasionally, a vibrant "new" ghost sign makes the news when one is uncovered after a siding is removed, or a neighboring building is torn down. But overall, we're losing them due to demolition. Ghost sign aficionados have been cataloging these phantasms before they disappear forever.
But one artist has been bringing them, ever so briefly, back to life. Craig Winslow's "Light Capsules" project utilizes projection mapping to recreate what a ghost sign might have looked like in its heyday.
"It's one night we are, like, conjuring up all of this magic energy and opening this time portal and seeing what these old ghosts have to say," said Winslow. "This art does not exist without the wall itself. It doesn't exist without the painter that did that back then, and I feel kind of almost like a medium. Like, I am the vessel that has this right skill set and the right preciseness to let someone else's work shine."
Before he shines his light on a wall, Winslow first researches the signs and their locations, utilizing everything from archival images to old directories to discern the various layers.
"I think that's part of what keeps this so exciting for me, is every single one of these is like a mystery to solve," he said. "Oftentimes it took years to totally solve a layer."
For this warehouse in Portland, Oregon, Winslow has identified five distinct layers. Lead paint bonded to the brick, which lets older signs peek through as others have faded. He carefully positions his projectors, and then, with the press of a button, decades of history are illuminated all at once – signs advertising Carman Manufacturing Co., Montgomery Ward, Oregon Transfer Co., Storage & Transfer Co., and Western Warehouse.
Locals stopped by to see an old building in a new light. One woman told us, "My dad worked at Montgomery Ward. He worked in the furniture department. He was a manager at one of the retail locations."
It's been a century since Montgomery Ward moved out of this building in Portland. But for an evening, it's back from the grave.
And yet, it's intentionally only temporary. Purists like Ron Ladouceur feel like repainting a ghost would destroy its spirit. Better to just let these signs rest in peace as a fading reminder of the past. "They just form this nice historical layer," he said. "We cannot just visit a city; we can visit that city in time."
Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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