By Michael Reel
Like Los Angeles, New York is a constant churn of new people, neighborhoods and buildings replacing the old. But if we tear ourselves away from our smartphones and look around, we can still spot signs of the past on walls and storefronts. They’re called “ghost signs”: faded ads for businesses that vanished long ago.
Journalist and photographer Frank Mastropolo has spent the last two years documenting more than 100 of the Big Apple’s ghost signs in a new book, “Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past.”
The oldest ghost signs, some more than a century old, are painted on brick walls. The lead paint that was used leached into the brick, ensuring their survival. But ghost signs may be manufactured of wood, steel, or engraved in stone. Neon, introduced in the US in 1923, changed signage forever.
Mastropolo writes about the historic James Brown House, built in the late 18th century. The building was the home of Brown, an African American hero and aide to George Washington during the Revolutionary War. “Brown sold tobacco from the ground floor of his two-and-a-half-story Federal-style building,” Mastropolo writes. “After Brown died the building was sold and the shop became a brewery and later a bar and restaurant that served sailors from the nearby Hudson River ports.”
The site has functioned as a bar and restaurant ever since and the building was landmarked in 1969. Now known as the Ear Inn, its current owners used black paint to cover the round parts of the “B,” avoiding the review required for new signage.
Mastropolo also includes “fake” ghost signs, created for Hollywood productions filmed in New York City. The signs helped recreate 1970s Little Italy on the Lower East Side for director Martin Scorsese’s film “The Irishman.”
“Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past” is available from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Signs-Clues-Downtown-Yorks/dp/0764358316/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mastropolo&qid=1583768614&sr=8-1 and Barnes & Noble. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-signs-frank-mastropolo/1130640380?ean=9780764358319
