My first uncovering

Here is a photograph that I took in June 2013, at the time of the Eleanor or Hildegard post. Two Art Deco apartment blocks side by side on Lygon Street. Whilst the one of the right hand side is perfect in its symmetry, the one on the left has obviously been designed to fit into a narrow space.
A few days ago I noticed an empty space where that building used to stand.

Albion Street

East Brunswick Auto

 

Brunswick is laid out on a grid, with the big streets such as Melville Road, Sydney Road, Lygon Street and Holmes/Nicholson Streets running north south. Apart from Brunswick Road (the southern boundary) and Moreland Road (the northern boundary) the streets running east west are small and narrow. However some of these are main routes in disguise. Albion Street has a bus service that takes you all the way to Essendon, so it is really quite an artery. It starts at the top of Lygon Street Brunswick East, with this wonderful old ghost garage just opposite the imposing façade of the Lyndhurst Club Hotel.

Yesterday I was out around Albion Street. It was a beautiful late spring day and I found a few more ghost signs.

Ghost neon signs and skeleton signs

 

 

As I walked along Sydney road I looked up and saw this wonderful old sign, not the supermarket one, but the one that says All Night Café. Straight out of some Hollywood movie. The metal structure is also magnificent. I have vague memories of driving back from Sydney in the days when the trip down Sydney Road was basically the only way to get into Melbourne, and no doubt the sign was then visible from afar. Not sure if it still lights up at night, must check that out next time I go to the Brunswick Green of an evening.

Men’s Hairdresser Ghost Sign

I love this sign in one of the old shops along Sydney Road in Coburg. Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to one of the owners of the neighbouring shop, Al Nada Sweets. She told me that the Men’s Middle Eastern Hairdressing Salon had opened in 1978, run by a gentleman from Tripoli, who passed away just recently. He had run the shop for about seven or eight years. The shop was in the front but he had lived out the back.

Textile industry ghost signs

 

Here are a few signs from buildings that are standing empty in Brunswick. This old factory on Albion Street just past the corner of Holmes Street must have been a hive of activity once. I wonder why it was called Yorkshire Textile Mills. I would love to be able to see inside it now.

Not ghost signs but living, shouting signs

Many of you know of my interest in ghost signs. Even more of you know of my passion for the environment and a sustainable future.

So I thought I would post some pictures that I took at the Climate Action Rally in the Treasury Gardens in Melbourne this morning. It was not only a demonstration of public concern and anger, it was a festival of protest, a carnival of expression. The abundance of home-made signs and banners was a delight to behold. They really are signs that shout....

Meeting the ghost sign man

Dr Stefan Schutt at the Lewis & Skinner exhibition

Character, circumstance and chance: those were the three “c’s” that I was taught about in Ulverstone High School so many years ago (or should I say decades ago?). They refer to the three essential elements of Shakespearean tragedy.

But they are also relevant to the story behind the exhibition I attended today: the Lewis and Skinner (an old Melbourne signwriting company) papers and recreation of an artisan hand painted sign on the side of an old building in Yarraville (now Lady Moustache Café).

Ghost signs in other languages

 

The multicultural nature of the city of Moreland is evident everywhere, as is the rapid rate of change sweeping across this city. But to have all of this evident in a 50 metre stretch of road is surely remarkable.

Is ghost sign spotting a crime?

I don’t think a phalanx of police on horseback will come charging down Sydney Road to prevent me photographing ghost signs. No, that is not what I mean.

“Was sind das fuer Zeiten, wo ein Gespraech ueber Baeume fast ein Verbrechen ist weil es ein Schweigen ueber so viele Untaten einschliesst.” (Bertolt Brecht, An die Nachgeborenen)

( What times are these, when a conversation about trees is almost a crime, as it implies silence about so many horrors! )

Another ghost sign

“What are you looking at? Is there something wrong?” asked the lady. I suppose I cut a strange figure, standing in a laneway peering into the mid-distance. I explained I was trying to decipher the lettering above the side doorway to the factory. I could make out COO but was struggling with the other letters. “Oh that was Sidney Cooke Fasteners” she said, blithely. “And before that it was a woodshed. Now it is a dry cleaning factory.” And in the future it will be a massive apartment complex, I thought.

“My parents live just here, have done for the past sixty years and so we know. Yes, it used to be a wood yard.”

The Little Teapot

Recently I met up with a friend at a very trendy café up on Lygon Street, but on the way I was amazed to see this little teapot painted on the bricks of an old building. This would have to be my favourite ghost sign so far! It is short and stout with a handle and a spout, just like in the children’s song. 

Ghost signs

 

Well, I knew that my interest in bricks and twentieth century industrial buildings is shared at least by Thomas Ryan in Tasmania, but I thought this was perhaps a rather obscure interest. As also my eye for what I called in an earlier post "bricks with vanishing signage". Then I heard on the radio about a recent conference and followed this lead on the internet. To my delight I learned that there are a whole community of people documenting what are officially known as “ghost signs”.  And I discovered the websites of Dr Stefan Schutt of Victoria University.

Bricks with vanishing signage

With these advertisements on either side of the doorway, the corner shop in Pearson Street must have been a popular destination in times long gone.