February 2024 – Pittsburgh Orbit

faded hand-painted sign for Kaufmann's Department Store painted on brick wall — Everything Under the Sun: Kaufmann’s, The Big Store. One of many ghost signs for home goods. Tarentum

Everything under the sun! Everything for everybody! Everything to wear!

Believe it or not, The Internet didn’t invent superlatives, big promises, and in-your-face advertising. No, it just ceased to make them mean anything.

We’re back with our second catch-all review of the ghost signs cleaned out of the attic. This time: house goods—department stores, clothing, furniture, hardware—you get the idea.

hand-painted sign for clothing store painted on brick wall — Ike ? Clothing, Ford City

faded hand-painted sign for department store painted on brick wall — Sack’s Dept. Store, Burgettstown

hand-painted sign for department store painted on brick wall — Brooks Department Store, Monessen

faded hand-painted sign for clothing store painted on brick wall — Israel Simon Bargain Store, Southside

hand-painted sign for furniture store painted on brick wall — Housermann Furniture, Wheeling, WV

faded hand-painted sign for hardware store painted on brick wall — Quality Hardware, Pittston, PA

hand-painted sign for hardware store painted on brick wall — Fink’s Hardware, Tyrone, PA

dilapidated sign for retail store — Independent, New Kensington

faded hand-painted sign for appliance parts store painted on brick wall — Universal Appliance Parts, Wheeling

hand-painted sign for tuxedo rental painted on brick wall — Basilon’s Tuxedo Rental & Sales, Ambridge

faded hand-painted sign for sporting goods store painted on brick wall — Oscar Robbins, Uptown

faded hand-painted sign for dry cleaners painted on brick wall — Manuel’s Dry Cleaners, Weirton, WV

faded hand-painted sign painted on brick wall — John White Cash or Credit, Beaver Falls

faded hand-painted sign for variety store painted on brick wall — Mr. Magoo’s Variety Store, Allentown

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Tom Tucker ginger ale — A painted ghost sign for Tom Tucker “That dirty mother … lover” Southern-style Mint Ginger Ale, probably from the 1950s-60s, faded and worn but still holding on. Brighton Road, Perry South.

Blocked by a freestanding billboard for decades, the advertisement for Tom Tucker Southern-style Mint Ginger Ale may as well have been unearthed by archaeologists when it arrived out-of-the-blue a few years ago.

A person can still purchase Tom Tucker, but it won’t come in a 32-ounce green glass bottle anymore. Looking every bit the champagne of Southern-style mint ginger ales it is, the big bottle was painted directly onto a two-story brick wall of a row house along Brighton Road probably 60 or 70 years ago.

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Coca-Cola — A solid investment. Coca-Cola ad still working today, Tarentum

We deal in ghosts, The Orbit. Ghosts of people that lived here, sure, but ghost houses too. There was an entire ghost neighborhood in Clairton until it disappeared completely. At some point we’ll get to our collections of ghost barbers, ghost taverns, and ghost pharmacies out to the world.

Ghost signs, though—the original “ghosts”! Advertising, from a time before billboards were as ubiquitous as they are now, was created by sign painters directly on the brick walls of buildings in prominent places. We’re lucky so many of them survive and—for the companies that persist, at least—one has to believe it was a solid investment to pay for one wall in 1960 and still have it working for them today.

We’ve got so many ghost sign photos in the backlog that we’re going to break up the collection into some themes. This week: food & drink edition. We’ll get to the other stuff soon.

Soda-Pop … and other beverages

brick wall painted with faded advertisement including glass bottles — (unknown) giant pop bottles with a family rightfully in awe, Uptown

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Squirt soda-pop — Kempler’s Deli Market / Squirt, Weirton, WV

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for RC Cola — Royal Crown Cola, Duquesne

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for long-gone dairy — Snee Bros. Dairy, Clairton

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for cold beer — Cold Beer, Monongahela ^[1]

faded ghost sign for long-gone liquor store — Cut Rate Liquor Store, Cumberland, MD

brick wall painted with very whiskey advertisement — (unknown) Whiskey, Ambridge

Junk Food Junkies

brick wall painted with many layers of faded advertisements — Yetter’s Chocolates, et al. Millvale

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Clark candy bars — Clark Bar, Hill District ^[2]

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for potato chips — DeMiller’s Potato Chips, Larimer ^[3]

Flour Power

ghost sign for Bill's bar painted on brick wall — Bill’s Bakery, East Vandergrift

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Gold Medal Flour — Henry Wer(?)’s Wholesale Liquor / Gold Medal Flour, Carrick

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for long-gone grocery store — (unknown—LaPollo?) Grocer / Mother’s Best Flour, Lawrenceville

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Kuhn's grocery store — Kuhn’s Quality Foods, Perry Hilltop ^[4]

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Mail Pouch tobacco — Kellar’s Groceries and Meats / Mail Pouch Tobacco, Lyndora

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for Lebanese food store — Mowad’s Mill City Inn, Lebanese Foods …, Aliquippa

painted sign for Fiore's Home Dressed Meats on brick wall, Pittsburgh, PA — Fiore’s Home Dressed Meats, Larimer ^[5]

faded ghost sign for butcher painted on brick wall — (unknown) meats, Lawrenceville

brick wall painted with faded advertisement for W. Boehm Co. — W. Boehm Co. Grocer, Bloomfield ^[6]

Notes:

[1] Cox Distributing still sells cold beer from this location, but the style of sign painting and subsequent meter placement suggest this may be from an older business.

[2] While this Clark Bar ghost sign looks like some holy grail of the genre, Orbit readers informed us it was created for the film Fences which filmed in the Hill District in 2016.

[3] No, you can’t read the name DeMiller’s in this sign, but somehow astute Orbit reader Maggie Ess identified the building as home to the Keystone Potato Chip Co., 6635 Kelly Street, maker of DeMiller’s chips.

[4] Kuhn’s Quality Foods is still very much a going concern with eight stores in the region, but this brick building on Perrysville Ave. no longer hosts one of them.

[5] Reposted from our earlier story Looking for a Lost Little Italy in Larimer.

[6] Macaroni Etc! This W. Boehm Co. “Manufacturers of Mother’s and Excelsior egg noodles, macaroni, and spaghetti” ghost sign twofer was exposed only when a pair of row houses were demolished on Pearl Street in 2021.

Pittsburgh Orbit

Around every corner, a new phenomenon

Month: February 2024

Ghost Sign Story: Home is Where the Ghosts Are

Ghost Sign Story: The Butcher, The Baker, The Soda-Pop Maker

Soda-Pop … and other beverages

Junk Food Junkies

Flour Power