Historic Signs

Formerly Hallman's Chevrolet Showroom, East Rochester NY, 2012.  Photo: T. Bursey

Signs are everywhere. And everywhere they play an important role in human activity. They identify. They direct and decorate. They promote, inform, and advertise. Signs are essentially social. They name a human activity, and often identify who is doing it. Signs allow the owner to communicate with the reader, and the people inside a building to communicate with those outside of it.

Signs speak of the people who run the businesses, shops, and firms. Signs are signatures. They reflect the owner's tastes and personality. They often reflect the ethnic makeup of a neighborhood and its character, as well as the social and business activities carried out there. By giving concrete details about daily life in a former era, historic signs allow the past to speak to the present in ways that buildings by themselves do not. And multiple surviving historic signs on the same building can indicate several periods in its history or use. In this respect, signs are like archeological layers that reveal different periods of human occupancy and use.

Michael J. Auer, Preservation Brief 25: The Preservation of Historic Signs.  National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior

Grant Avenue, San Francisco, May 2008.  Photo: T. Bursey