'Ghost signs' expose Detroit's faded history

As more blighted buildings are knocked down in Detroit, unexpected traces of the city's history have reappeared.



Vintage, brick-painted advertising, known as "ghost signs," look as bold as they may have appeared decades earlier, preserved against the walls of adjacent buildings before they were torn down. In some cases, the visible history people photographed in recent years has already been painted over or hidden under graffiti.



After documenting some of the city's historic ghost signs last week, the Free Press asked readers to help us find more exposed commercial art around Detroit.



Here's what you helped us discover:

One especially well-preserved image is a Borden's Evaporated Milk advertisement on the side of a brick building on Fort Street near Waterman Street in southwest Detroit. The red, yellow, green and blue colors illustrate a can of milk and the slogan "wherever the recipe calls for milk." This find was suggested in an e-mail from Rogerio Hinojosa.

A more-faded find with a history closer to home is a Carhartt Overalls advertisement, in the company's original font, seen on a building on Kercheval Avenue near Coplin Street on the city's east side. Carhartt's origins in the Detroit area date to 1899, and the company recently opened a store in Midtown. Multiple readers directed us to this historic find.

A location submitted by more than a dozen readers, and possibly the most recently exposed given the condition of the soil, is on the Detroit border in Grosse Pointe Farms at Mack and McKinley avenues. The black-and-white image on cinder blocks features "Schnappskey," a whiskey for $1.34 per 25/32 pint. It's on the side of Village Food Market and, judging by Google Maps, appears to have been next door to a clothing cleaners.

A disappointing find among the suggestions was on West Warren Avenue near Martin Road on Detroit's west side. What in 2009 featured a Webster Cigars advertisement with a man's face and colorful trim is sun-bleached and graffiti-covered, with only a few words visible. Dan Wisniewski sent us a photo of the 2009 version, and it's featured in our online gallery.

The series of images, now in its third installment on the Free Press website, started from a tip from Joe Marra, who sent us a photograph of a Vernor's sign in pristine condition on the 7500 block of West McNichols.

A spokesman with the City of Detroit confirmed its neighboring building had been taken down as part of a program to remove blighted commercial structures along the city's main neighborhood corridors. The city has demolished about 125 of them this year.

To keep history from fading, one of the readers who e-mailed us works to restore signs, repainting them as they appeared in their heyday. Mark Serra of Ferndale sent us an example he worked on in Milan, a town south of Ann Arbor.

There, he restored a sign on the side of Milan Medical Clinic that previously advertised "The home of good merchandise: Moore and Minto." The building formerly housed the store, and Serra brought fresh vibrance to the faded piece on 3 East Main Street, facing the town square known as Tolan Square in Milan.

To the people who sent us tips: Thank you, and here's hoping this helps to preserve this fascinating, historic art.

Contact Robert Allen at rallen@freepress.com or @rallenMI.