Ghost signs

Do you know why we can still see ghost signs on the side of historic buildings?

The photo shows a ghost sign on the Stephens Block at the corner of Montana and West Park in Butte. Built as a retail space and boardinghouse in 1891 by Irish immigrant Frank Stephens, the Stephens Block is a contributing building to the Butte-Anaconda National Historic Landmark.

“Ghost signs” are the hashtag-friendly term for custom advertisements that were hand-painted onto the sides of buildings. Ghost signs or “brickads” were a popular advertising form from the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries and were used by all manner of businesses, from hotels and grocery stores to liveries and tailors. 

Brickads fell off in popularity by the mid-twentieth century when more disposable sign formats made the costs of installing and maintaining hand-painted signs less attractive. Wall advertisements were increasingly left to deteriorate or simply got painted over.

But decades later, the “ghost signs” that remain cling tenaciously to the brick thanks to the lead in their oil-based paints. Lead helps the paint stick to the brick and weather the elements. The latex paints used today, including in ghost sign restoration, thankfully don’t include lead. But as a result, they flake easily and require frequent touch-ups to keep their vibrant colors.

Lively debate surrounds the question of best practices in ghost sign preservation: is it better to restore the signs with new paint so that they’re more visible to residents and tourists, or is it preferable to let the signs continue to decay?

Light shows offer a compromise between the two approaches. Old photographs of streetscapes are used to digitally reconstruct and project historic advertisements on top of their faded remnants—often, multiple ghost signs sit one on top of the other, and light shows let us see all these layers without disturbing or altering the historic buildings. Learn more on the National Trust for Historic Preservation website about how a light artist in Oregon helps to revive ghost signs in a preservation-friendly way: https://savingplaces.org/stories/your-citys-ghost-signs-have-stories-to-tell

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