Detail of S. Oppenheimer & Co., 170 Eldridge Street. (Photos: Frank Mastropolo).
When we first brought you our top 10 favorite ghost signs in January, there were still many more examples of the past on walls throughout the neighborhood. In April we featured another ten signs.
Since then we’ve found storeowners who have helped preserve some of these relics by incorporating them into their signage. Others, some a century old, continue to slowly fade away. Click on the image below to move through the slideshow and please let us know of any favorites of your own in the comments section.
High Style Shirts, 27 Orchard Street
High Style Shirts was one of many clothing stores that lined Orchard Street back in the day. We reported in 2014 that owner Georgia Fenwick would soon open Georgia, a store that would sell women’s clothing from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
We recently congratulated Fenwick for keeping the old High Style sign. Fenwick said that when she took over the space from the Strange Loop gallery, the sign was intact except for a missing letter “H.” Not a problem. She replaced it with a glowing neon pineapple.
Gold Medal Flour, 164 Eldridge Street
Near the northeast corner of Delancey and Eldridge Streets is a fading ad for Gold Medal Flour, a brand that started in 1880 and continues today. Eating in Translation points out that the script above the brand name reads, “Eventually.” The sign’s copy is a shortened version of Gold Medal’s old slogan, “Eventually, Washburn-Crosby’s Gold Medal Flour. Why Not Now?”
S. Rothkopf & Sons, 116 Suffolk Street
This space on Suffolk Street has served as an art film house, a gallery and for four years was home to Organic Avenue. Above its entrance is a sign for S. Rothkopf & Sons, a long-gone company that made children’s sleepwear. Lost City unearthed the story of senior partner Henry Rothkopf, who in 1895 shot himself to death in his office. Though the business was in good shape Rothkopf, 33, was lame and in poor health.
Today the Mr. Rapidan café serves coffee there during the day and traditional Peruvian ceviche at night.
Turkish Trophies Cigarettes and Fletcher's Castoria, 13 Division Street
You’ll have to stand on one of Chinatown’s busiest corners and look up to spot an ad that may be 100 years old. “This Chatham Square faded ad is tricky to decipher because it’s actually two ads, one painted on top of the other,” notes Ephemeral New York. “The newer ad is for Turkish Trophies, an old cigarette brand. Underneath it is the word 'for' in yellow, and a long word with a fancy F. That’s for Fletcher’s Castoria, a children’s laxative popular in the 19th century. Fletcher’s had ads all over the city.”
Forgotten New York adds that the Turkish Trophies brand was introduced in 1892 and continued until about 1930. Scroll down for an historical photo of the sign alongside the Second Avenue El.
Metropolitan News Company, 47-53 Chrystie Street
The Metropolitan News Co. delivered papers to newsstands and vending machines across the city. The company, founded in 1893, moved into its headquarters on Chrystie Street in 1919. By 1924 it billed itself as the “largest newspaper delivery system of its kind in the world.”
The New York Times reported in 1992 that its parent company had purchased Metropolitan, “a wholesale newspaper delivery operation that distributes almost half of the copies of The Times sold in the New York area, as well as other papers.”
Today a variety of retail stores occupy the space but the etched sign of Metropolitan remains.
Parodi Cigars, 620 East Sixth Street
Sadly, half of the otherwise well preserved sign for Parodi Cigars has been painted over. What remains are the words “Parodi Factory,” “la cicca” (Italian for “cigar butt”), Emilio Parodi’s signature and a seal that reads, “Parodi: Seal of Quality.”
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation notes that Parodi Cigars was established in 1913 in Greenwich Village by three Italian immigrants. GVSHP doubts that there was a Parodi cigar factory in a nearby building on Sixth Street because of a law passed in the 1880’s that forbid cigar-making in tenements.
The Bowery Savings Bank, 130 Bowery
The Bowery Savings Bank building was designed in a Roman classical style by Stanford White. Completed in 1895, the building features the bank’s name carved high above huge Corinthian columns. The name was placed high to be seen by passengers as they passed on the Third Avenue El.
The New York Times explains that banks were designed in such grand fashion “to inspire confidence. When the United States economy collapsed in the Panic of 1893, many people blamed banks for the depression that followed and withdrew their money. So, banks built in that era (until the end of the Great Depression, when banks began to demystify themselves with glass-fronted branches) were meant to suggest strength, as if they had been there forever.”
Today the building is the site of Capitale, a banquet hall that opened in 2002.
S. Oppenheimer & Co., 170 Eldridge Street
A little history is required to read the signs for S. Oppenheimer & Co. above the entrances of a private residence. Ghost signs guru Walter Grutchfield writes, “As far as I know these signs with a date range 1875 to 1879 are the oldest painted signs in New York City.”
Grutchfield learned that S. Oppenheimer & Co. manufactured sausage casings. Founded by German immigrant Sigmund Oppenheimer, the company was in business from approximately 1872 to 1960. The sign above the door on the left reads, “Office of / S. Oppenheimer.” What’s left of the sign on the right once read “S. Oppenheimer.”
Coogan Bros. Furniture, 123 Bowery
It’s easy to pass the faded sign for Coogan Bros. on the Bowery but it’s worth a look before it completely fades away. Walter Grutchfield believes the ad is the second oldest painted wall sign in New York City.
Grutchfield writes that James J. Coogan was a successful furniture manufacturer whose store was located at 121-123-125 Bowery from 1879 to 1892. Only 123 Bowery, with the sign on its south side, stills stands. Coogan would go on to become a one-term Manhattan Borough president. Property he owned in upper Manhattan near the Polo Grounds, former home of baseball’s N.Y. Giants and Mets, is still known as Coogan’s Bluff.
M&H Tailors, 134 Eldridge Street
Not much is remembered about M&H Tailors but the gold leaf lettering on its window is well known to cocktail aficionados. For 13 years the narrow space was home to Milk & Honey, a speakeasy-style bar. “Milk & Honey changed perceptions in the bar world,” claims Drinks International. “Here was a bar that was painstaking in its devotion to refinement. It made dim lighting a talking point and secreted its achievements away from a New York limelight that often exposes the frailties in other bars.”
Milk & Honey moved uptown after 13 years and two of its former bartenders reopened the low-key spot as Attaboy. The tailor shop sign remains and patrons still knock and enter through an unmarked steel door on the right.
BONUS: Moe's Meat Market, 237 Elizabeth Street
At first glance, the peeling Moe’s Meat Market sign above a Little Italy storefront seems to be a classic ghost sign, but it’s not. The sign hangs above a former butcher shop, opened in 1923, that is today a gallery for the work of artist Robert Kobayashi. The New York Times writes that Kobayashi’s work depicts “the candy shops, social clubs, a funeral home on Mulberry Street, his own building, and all the places he used to pass while collecting cookie boxes and olive-oil canisters from cafes in Little Italy.”
Phyllis Stigliano, a principal in the gallery, told us that the sign was created as scenery during filming of 1990’s The Godfather Part III.
