vintage mural ads & other signage by Frank H. Jump & friends
‘Ready To Wear Clothing – Dress & Work Suits – Overcoats & Paints at Lowest Prices – Cleaning, Pressing & Repairing’ © Vincenzo Aiosa
Through the window of his car in the rain, on the corner of Jefferson & Wilson Streets, Vincenzo captured this portal to the past with his iPhone.
Also at:
Saturated & Grayscaled – Split & Stacked © Frenzo
This sign looks pre-1950s © Vincenzo Aiosa
Above the lower left window you can see the word ‘furniture’ in turn-of-the-century fonts © Vincenzo Aiosa
NY Companies Index – CLICK FOR LINK
NY Companies Index – CLICK FOR LINK
Vincenzo took the shots above on Park Avenue just south of Broadway with his iPhone. So this is my theory. From the look of the fonts and the weathering, the signs written on the brick between the windows are clearly very early 20th-century (c.1910). My guess is the sign for Broadway Sleep Mart can be anywhere from 1930’s to 1940’s. I’m going to assume that the proprietors conducted their business at the Park Avenue location for several decades and then outgrew their space and moved up the street on Broadway. The public records above show the address at 835 Broadway with an incorporation of 1956 – up the street a bit in a larger space, now a laundromat. Vincenzo also points out that the Park Avenue location may have been maintained as a warehouse. I’m also inferring from these records that in 1962, they changed the name of the store.
© Iman R. Abdulfattah
Previously posted on FAB:
An Avenue B Mainstay © Iman R. Abdulfattah
A fine interview, Making It, can be found at The Local East Village – September 19, 2012. Apparently opening its doors in 1976 on Avenue D, then moving to 208 Avenue B five years later, finally landing at 205 Avenue B, owner Petra Oliveiri tells a story of the gentrification of Loisada and the resilience of a Puerto Rican bodega.
© Iman R. Abdulfattah
History of Nom Wah
Nom Wah Tea Parlor first opened at 13-15 Doyers Street back in 1920 as a bakery and a tea parlor. For most of the 20th century, Nom Wah Tea Parlor served as a neighborhood staple offering fresh chinese pasteries, steamed buns, dim sum and tea. After it lost its lease at 15 Doyers in 1968, it moved into a brand new kitchen at 11 Doyers Street and has occupied 11-13 Doyers Street ever since. Nom Wah is most famous for its homemade lotus paste and red bean filling for moon cake during the Chinese autumn festival. It is also famous for its almond cookie. – For more see the Nom Wah Tea Parlor Website!
© Iman R. Abdulfattah
According to the website Found Ampersands, the Trowel & Square Ballroom “was operated by the Order of Eastern Star, the Female part of the Masons.” Looking to the right of the ballroom’s sign, you can see the Mason’s sign for Queen Esther, Grand Chapter.
Some searches also reveal that up until December 2012, some hip-hop events were advertised on Facebook that were hosted at the ballroom.
Google search
Also at Scouting NY, are some great interior shots of the ballroom, within what is now the Salvation Army thriftstore, which has apparently lost its lease.
One of the oddest things I found about the ballroom was a reference in an April 2011 online article about child adoption in UK’s The Spectator called Harlem Renaissance:
The first thing I see is a glimmer of Harlem’s happy past: a painted sign for the Trowel and Square Ballroom, a remnant from the days of Billie Holiday, Bojangles and 80 per cent employment.
Happy past? Count the assumptions in this quote.
CLICK FOR LINK TO PDF OF The Life of William McKinley (1901) – FREE EBOOK
@Fuzzygalore here’s what the sign looked like sometime around 1896. (Ok it is over a 100 years old) pic.twitter.com/Q3fOlJZp7R
— NevadaWolf (@NevadaWolf) November 22, 2013
@Fuzzygalore @FadingAd Found the pic I had taken of that 1896 sign. pic.twitter.com/hemFpWafSz — NevadaWolf (@NevadaWolf) November 29, 2013
@aroundcarson Do you have an equivalent for this pic? Its up Clear Creek, now just beyond the Private property sign pic.twitter.com/yhFWp3FVCL — NevadaWolf (@NevadaWolf) November 29, 2013
@NevadaWolf @FadingAd @aroundcarson Here’s a small gallery of similar ‘rockads’: http://t.co/UsC2bhGab0 #ghostsigns #rockads
— Ghostsigns (@ghostsigns) November 30, 2013
@ghostsigns @FadingAd hehehe I just passed by that Eagle Club one a few days ago in Wilson Canyon outside Yerington. Small world. 🙂
— NevadaWolf (@NevadaWolf) November 30, 2013
The color picture [above] was taken by me, Teri L. The book the black and white photo came out of is called: Remember When: Celebrating the History of Carson City 1858-1950. The picture is located on page 101 and is credited to “Fred Willis Day Collection, Nevada State Museum”.
I first saw the ad when looking for a nearby geocache. The only part that was visible was the top half showing the candidates names and F W Day, but graffiti and the sun had obscured the rest. I didn’t think much of it because the black and yellow sign was still vibrant so it didn’t seem old. The significance didn’t click until I was looking through the Carson City historic photographs book and saw it in full and was able to make out the rest of the sign. Interesting that it says “Bryan or McKinley for President”.
The cliff wall it is on faces northwest and is tucked in a bend of the canyon (completely hidden from the modern road that passes nearby). The election was in 1896, which makes the vibrant colors very impressive if they are original.
A bit of history on Clear Creek Rd…
In the early 1860’s there were two main routes from Carson City to Spooner Summit, King’s Canyon Rd and Clear Creek Rd. In 1861 (1862?) Rufus Walton built a steep dirt path down Clear Creek Canyon, known as the Walton Toll Road. The Lake Bigler (Tahoe) Toll Road Company – owners of the Lake Tahoe Wagon Road – bought Walton’s route in 1863 to connect it to the more developed King’s Canyon route. Until 1875, most traffic went through King’s Canyon though some still favored the other road. In 1875 a flume was constructed to haul lumber from Glenbrook down to Carson City where it would be transported to the mines in Virginia City. The road in Clear Creek was improved and became the main route up and down the mountain. That is until the automobile arrived in 1913 when the King’s Canyon route was linked to the Lincoln Highway. However, that route remained only a graded dirt road and in 1927 the Nevada Highway Department paved and improved the Clear Creek route for use as the new US Highway 50. It remained the primary route, once again, until the modern highway was built in 1957, completely realigned and widened in anticipation of the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley.
Hope that helps somewhat to place the painting into its correct context. The two routes are so intertwined I had to research when each was used as I could only find reference to Clear Creek after 1928, which didn’t make sense if the election was in 1896. And most books and articles say King’s Canyon was the main route until 1875. There is a gap between 1875 and 1913 when the Lincoln Highway connected Carson City to Spooner Summit via King’s Canyon. I know the flume was constructed down Clear Creek and found that date to be 1875. Since that construction coincides with the decline of traffic on King’s Canyon, I can only presume that access was improved since lumber was the biggest business in the region due to the mines of the Comstock. – Teri L, November 29, 2013
Nevada Milepost – Spring 2011 – Nevada’s Technology Transfer Quarterly Vol. 23 No. 1
Ad taken from ‘Dainties’ Union Cook Book – Bancroft Library – University of California
taken from Artemisia Yearbook 1904 – CLICK FOR LINK
William J. Bryan – McKinley’s Presidential Opponent – CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE © Wikipedia Commons
Future president William McKinley at age 15., c. 1858
– from The Life of William McKinley (1901) by Oscar King Davis,
p. 1 – Wikipedia Commons – CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE
Leon Czolgosz – McKinley’s Assassin – CLICK FOR LINK – Wikipedia Commons
Found some ghost signs for you in West Virginia, @FadingAdpic.twitter.com/LXr9GDEPY5
— Nick Hirshon (@nickhirshon) November 30, 2013
Here’s another ghost sign for you @FadingAd. Out in Parkersburg, WV. pic.twitter.com/3bbFaWyU18
— Nick Hirshon (@nickhirshon) November 30, 2013
Lumbering, Tackle, Chain Dog. ??? Grayscale- CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE © Nick Hirshon
Men of West Virginia, 1903 – © Google Books
W.H. Smith Hardware Company Building, also known as the Oil and Gas Museum of the Oil, Gas and Industrial Historical Association, is a historic commercial building located at Parkersburg, Wood County, West Virginia. It was built in 1899, on the foundation of a building built about 1874. It is a four-story, masonry building with Romanesque Revival architectural details. The rectangular building measure 60 feet by 120 feet, with an 18 feet by 12 feet outcrop. It housed the W.H. Smith Hardware Company until the 1980s. It now houses the Oil and Gas Museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. – Wikipedia
W.H. Smith Company was founded in 1886 by William H. Smith and for decades occupied the W.H. Smith Hardware building in downtown Parkersburg. In 1975 Vin Rathbone purchased the company from William A. Smith and in the 1980s moved the company to its current location on DuPont Road in Parkersburg. W.H.Smith Company, a certified small business, has a proud history dating back more than 135 years – and is a leader in producing Hose Assemblies and Systems and Load Securing and Material Handling Products, primarily for military applications. We provide value added services including assembly, light fabrication, welding, painting and testing. – WH Smith Co. Website
REFERENCES:
Selfie © Frank H. Jump
Daniel Roberts in front of Miss Weber’s Millinery – Flatiron © Frank H. Jump
Steed Taylor in front of Griffon Shears – Chelsea © Frank H. Jump
John Kelly in front of Society Smokes Cigar – Midtown © Frank H. Jump
Not much was known about AIDS when I became infected with HIV in 1984. Upon receiving my diagnosis, I was told I would most likely be dead by 1990. In 1997, when I started documenting what I called fading ads– hand-painted vintage wall advertisements, many of which have long outlived the products they advertise- I had already well outlived my prognosis. Today at 53, I have become a living advertisement for a disease that seems to have lost its exigency in the public light.
As this project has matured and I have become a long-term survivor, the original metaphor of the Fading Ad Campaign that rang true for me fifteen years ago still resounds, but the overtones have modulated. Although I continue to utilize these images to draw light upon the fading problem of AIDS, fostering awareness isn’t the primary focus anymore as is the condition of the aging survivors, many of whom have lost their fear of dying from AIDS but are succumbing to age-related illnesses and complications from pharmacological toxicities. Through this campaign, my life mission is to continue to shed light on this lingering issue that still affects many of us in the LGBTQ community.
According to a study conducted in 2006 by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, of the one hundred thousand HIV+ people living in NYC, thirty percent are over age fifty and seventy percent are over forty. Coupled with the living with HIV and the comorbidities of aging, the health care system is ill-prepared for what is to come in the next decade and according to this study, “there is little research and even less acknowledgment or foresight anticipating this consequential commingling of HIV and aging comorbidities.”
After fifteen years of developing this project, the metaphor of survival has become more profound since I never expected to live into my fifties with this virus. Others in the LGBTQ community who are living with HIV into their later years are equally challenged by aging and navigating through a rapidly changing city. As our urban landscape continues to radically change, our memories of the city and of our bodies in the city becomes truncated and distorted as the arc of time bends and our perception of time begins to accelerate. Of the thousands of ads I’ve photographed, many have faded out of existence, been covered over or destroyed with entire city blocks having been demolished and replaced by new shiny glass and metal buildings. But still many fading ads silently cling to the walls of buildings, barely noticed by the rushing passersby.
It is my plan to use a representative selection from the Fading Ad Campaign as a backdrop to create new portraits with members of the surviving HIV+ community in NYC, many who are also visual artists. I also plan to work with Visual AIDS to organize interviews and portrait shots with these artists. Additionally, I am collaborating with a social worker from Mount Sinai who works with LGBT elders with HIV who are struggling to maintain their dignity and their gay identities in all aspects of the healthcare system. Many LGBT elders with HIV have lived their lives publicly but since they are now dependent upon home care workers who may not be sympathetic to their identities, they find themselves going back into the closet, clinging silently like a fading ad on a northern exposure, hoping not to be noticed.
These new images juxtaposed with the 35mm chrome shots I took fifteen years ago will provide a narrative of the challenges LGBT elders with HIV face, yet also provide a sense of purpose and validation at a time in their lives that seems uncertain. These portraits of our community against the backdrop of the city and the fading ads will become a document of this time framed by both the past and future. – Frank H. Jump, December 1, 2013
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