“Ghost signs,” the fading advertising murals usually found painted on old brick buildings, are something that a lot of people never notice. Many of them quite literally blend into their surroundings, and they are often located on parts of buildings—and in parts of the city—that do not generate as much eye-traffic as they did when the companies they promoted were still in business. Take the time to start noticing them, however, and you’ll be surprised how many you’ll find.
Adam Levin, administrator of the “Old Milwaukee” Facebook group and self-described “history buff and amateur photographer,” started to really notice them about five years ago. And he started taking pictures for fun. A collection of his photos—along with histories of many of the companies featured in the collected signs—has been published by History Press.
In his book, Fading Ads of Milwaukee, Levin does a great job of telling both the stories of the businesses that commissioned these signs and the stories of how some of the more obscure signs came to light. A beautiful sign for Air Glide Gasoline was uncovered during the demolition of the old Comedy Café building on Brady Street. Another photograph is of a series of paper ads found plastered underneath the aluminum siding of a Walker’s Point structure. He found another hidden on the building that houses Axel’s Inn on Oakland Avenue on Milwaukee’s East Side. He was only able to shoot the sign after asking the owner of Oakland Gyros, who lives above the restaurant, for permission to access the roof. He ordered a gyro first and made sure to have his camera out and at the ready (“When you have your camera with you, people take you seriously,” he says) to help soften the blow of what might have been a taxing request. In the end, Levin was able to get the shot through a window in the man’s upstairs apartment.
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“They have a kind of vibe to them.” Levin says of the signs. “I’m very interested in the history of Milwaukee, and this is just another way of documenting Milwaukee’s past.” The signs are indeed unique markers of the past in that, unlike written histories or photographs or most archived physical mementos, they are very slowly leaving us. While many of the signs documented in the book are still bold and vibrant, others have faded to the point of barely being visible. Others, like the Air Glide sign on Brady Street, have been outright destroyed since Levin shot them. On a long-enough timeline, each of the painted signs featured in the book will eventually fade away. But to Levin, that is part of the beauty of these signs. The only way to truly preserve them, he feels, is through photography. “It’s like someone who is older but who doesn’t want a facelift or anything like that, just to age naturally,” he said. “If you try to touch these signs up, you lose some of the history.”
Levin will discuss Fading Ads of Milwaukee at 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 21, at Boswell Book Co., 2559 N. Downer Ave.
