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Painted Type

Great piece in The New York Times (free subscription required), on the death of hand-painted wall-sized signage, like this beauty, in the Bronx.

Posted by | November 05, 2005 | LINK

Comments

2nd link doesn't work for me ("forbidden").

Craig Eliason | Nov 5, 2005 06:53 PM

Sorry, typo, should be good now.

Tom Dolan | Nov 5, 2005 08:02 PM

If you love wall size stuff, you'll definitely like this building size stuff in Winnipeg, Canada. Definitely worth an eloquent eulogy, or at least a moment of silence.

Ray Fenwick | Nov 6, 2005 07:01 AM

Funny, this: "Landlords, sniffing revivals ..." I guess one man's desecration is another mans's revival, and vice versa - both within type and without.

hhp

Hrant | Nov 6, 2005 08:59 PM

Truer words are hard to speak Hrant. On a side note, my current office neighbor has an antique painted brick wall as one of the interior walls of his loft office space (in Pasadena, CA). Quite lovely, and nice to know the landlords actually recognized it as such.

Tom Dolan | Nov 6, 2005 09:39 PM

Wow! Someone else likes the old painted buildings in Winnipeg. Sadly, I'm still stuck here.

geoff | Nov 7, 2005 09:39 AM

This example is from Reading, UK:

I particularly like the way that the quotation marks have been treated:

J Coleclough | Nov 8, 2005 04:01 AM

I was in Winnipeg this year, and was struck by the number of these old buildings and signage still intact. Interestingly the 'Peg's Red River College is a new construction built in/around 2 older buildings. While getting a tour of the college we found ourselves in a wonderful glass room (a drawing studio, with just amazing light) and we turned to see that the interior brick wall used to be an exterior wall, and still had one of these old signs painted on it. We (a group of designers) exclaimed with delight, and complimented the [Director?] on this brilliant piece of preservation for an art college. He looked surprised and said, "Really? We wanted it stripped and painted white; I don't know why the contractors didn't do that."

Perhaps Winnipeg's building contractors have more sense than art school administrators.

marian bantjes | Nov 9, 2005 12:05 AM

There's a fast food restaurant in Thessaloniki, Greece that sort of bumped into an ancient brick wall... and decided to "go glass" and incoporate it into the design. It looks fabulous.

hhp

Hrant | Nov 9, 2005 09:02 AM

Here are three Alabama examples from my Flickr collection:

Dystopos | Nov 17, 2005 02:29 PM


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