Foreign Lands: Company Town?

I spent a recent Friday morning wandering around the older-looking parts of Sioux City, Iowa, in oppressive heat, and, surprise, I found more than a few ghost signs.  As it turned out, however, an overwhelming majority of them, on multiple buildings, were from a single company.  So, rather than risk turning this place into Ghost Signs of a Single Company of Sioux City, I'm going to bundle all the signs for them in a single post.  Prepare yourselves, people, as this is going to be a longer post (at least in terms of number of pictures).  I may even try to add a new trick to my magic blogging bag too.

I judged the picture up top there as the best of them, so, let's all take a moment to enjoy its beauty and clarity.  We don't get a good sign like this every day, Richard (okay, family inside joke there, if you don't get it, my apologies).  You probably have, however, heard of Bekins and seen their big green logo on a side of the truck.  But unless you're some sort of van lines fanboy or something (which probably is a thing), I bet you didn't know that Bekins was founded right here in River Ci... er.. Sioux City back in 1891 by brothers Martin and John Bekins.

The sign up top, and the next few below, are from a building wrapped in them just to the west of downtown at 4th St. and Wesley Parkway.  The one up top faces south and should be visible as you travel up Wesley.  This one's on the back, facing up the hill:

Once again, we're reminded how the fireproof thing seemed to be a point of advertising distinction back in the day.  There must have been fire everywhere.  If it was still there, we could have stopped in at the office at 419 4th St. to inquire, but alas, that's a Hom Furniture store now.

And with that, before this post gets so long as to take over the entire front page, let's try for some of that blogging magic.  Follow me after the jump, assuming I can figure out how to add one, pretty please.

Not That #2

I feel like I've been straying from the mission a bit too much lately (what's up with all those foreign signs, eh?), so let's get back to it.  We're in Minneapolis again, and we have an honest-to-goodness ghost sign.  And as an added bonus, we get to see a little glimmer of summertime blue sky and green leaves.

This building is veritably wrapped in signage on all sides (see below), but I put the best one up top.  It's on the southeast side of the building, and under the "for lease" sign you can see that it says "Cameron Transfer & Storage Co." who were agents of Allied Van Lines (a brand now owned by Sirva, which brings up professional memories I will keep to myself).

It turns out that I found much more than I expected about this building and about Cameron.  It seems that Schafer Richardson has (or had) plans to redevelop the site and claims that the building was built in the early 1900s and is eligible for the National Register of historic places.

The company name seems to come from Carlisle Cameron, a Canadian-born businessman who took over what sounds like a carting business in here in 1884 and was still at it 42 years later.  It seems the company was active in something called the Central Warehouseman's Club in the early 1920s. Now that sounds like an antitrust problem waiting to happen.

At least one other blog has shared the more generic signage on the opposite side of the building.  One has to wonder both how you make storage truly fire-proof, and just how rampant fires must have been at the time to make avoiding it such a popular point of advertising.

The business also shows up in a Minnesota Supreme Court decision from 1910.  It seems that someone made the foolish decision to remove their goods from the fire-safe premises of Mr. Cameron and lost them to a fire on a train.  Tsk, tsk.


Others have posted this building to Flickr here and here.