Adams Shoes

Adams Shoes-Chicago, IL, a photo by William 74 on Flickr.

Vintage Chicago signage. Adams Shoes is long out of business, but it's storefront remained mostly unchanged for years. Check out the font on the yellow sign-it pretty much carbon dates it to the early sixties, maybe earlier. This sign also includes a smaller neon "Adams" sign on the front corner of the building. All of it was in pretty good shape, and probably looked awesome lit up at night.

I shot this several years ago-I don't know if any of the signs are still extant.

Rapid Transit

Not that 5th Avenue! This is a vintage station sign from the Chicago Rapid Transit Company's elevated train system, also known as the L. This one happens to be for 5th Avenue on the now-defunct Westchester branch, which ran from the old Metropolitan Elevated's Garfield Park line at Desplaines Avenue all the way out to Mannheim Road. It was meant to be a bypass for the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin interurban, serving what was hoped to be the newly booming town of Westchester. Development never happened, and the line remained a footnote in CA&E and CTA history until it's abandonment in the fifties. Today, parts of it make up the Illinois Prairie Path.

The sign itself is pretty interesting too. This style of station sign was current in the CRT from 1892 until 1977, when an entirely new, unified sign package was introduced in the CTA's system. Quite a few of the classic blue and white signs remained in use, though, the most famous one being at Sheridan on the Red Line, which remained in place until 2002! These signs are quite sought after today, along with the old yellow street signs, as a piece of Chicago history.

The Daily News

The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon paper, and was published between 1876 and 1978. It had a pretty long and illustrious history, and managed to win thirteen Pulitzers during it's lifetime. The Daily News opened one of the first foreign bureaus in American journalism, doing so in 1898. This was one of several innovations introduced during the tenure of longtime owner Victor F. Lawson, who also oversaw changes in promotion, classified advertising, and the syndication of news stories and comics. Aiming at a wider audience than the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News was priced low and became known for it's distinctively aggressive reporting style. In 1929, it moved to new headquarters, an Art Deco edifice along the Chicago River, that stands today as a Chicago landmark called Riverside Plaza.

After a long period of ownership by Knight Newspapers, the Daily News was bought by Field Enterprises, which also owned the Chicago Sun-Times. The News moved into the Sun-Times' building on North Wabash (now the site of the Trump building). Although the paper was still strong, and had added Mike Royko to the masthead, the sixties and seventies were mostly a period of decline for the Daily News. Partly due to management decisions, a bigger problem was shifting demographics. Afternoon papers in general were in decline-targeted at office workers, many of the News' core readership moved to the suburbs where they probably caught the news on television rather than in the paper. By 1978 it was all over.

Amazingly, for a newspaper that stopped publication over thirty years ago, Daily News ghost signs still turn up in Chicago. This one's on the North Side, near the Armitage Brown Line stop.

Dewey's

Another Chicago ghost neon sign. This one hung over a Mexican restaurant on Clark Street, near Devon. At the time I don't think they sold burgers, and probably not chili either, but I never actually ate there. This is obviously a really old sign, from the fifties I'd guess, and dates from the time this was a greasy spoon called Dewey's. I was surprised that it stayed in place so long-it was clearly an anachronism, but I suppose the expense of taking it down and having the power shut off was prohibitive. And, I have to admit, an old sign like this is eye catching, so it couldn't have hurt things to leave it up.

I shot this in the spring of 2009, and I understand that this sign came down later that year.

Athenian Candle Co.

Athenian Candle Co.-Chicago, IL, originally uploaded by William 74.

It's Friday, kids, and you know what that means! Our weekly celebration of Atomic Number Ten!

This is another classic Chicago neon sign. The Athenian Candle Company is in Greektown, near the UIC campus. I remember walking past this shop many times back when I was a student there (over a decade ago now!). It hadn't changed much when I shot this back in 2009-same religious candles in the window, same old sign on the door, and this beauty on the corner. I don't know if it is lit up anymore-it looks to be in great shape though. I swear I have a shot from way back when of it lit up at night but I can't find it anymore.