Party Like It's 1884

Okay, so this one is both less of a ghost and a little too easy. The good folks at Gardner Hardware Co. tell us they have been serving Minneapolis since 1884. That probably means that their fairly freshly-painted sign is covering other of their older signs, including the one for The Maytag Company (in whose demise as an independent company I played a minor role, but let's not get into more of that antitrust stuff).

The store is at 515 Washington Ave. N.

Layers

This one's also been covered by Writing On The Wall. Or, more accurately, the main sign has been. The main sign is for Appliance Parts Inc., distributors of goods described in the name. The name is a bit too generic to have much hope of learning the history of the company, but here are a pair of interesting shots from Flickr.

There are other intriguingly vague whispers surrounding that which is visible. Below the appliance parts, I think I can read McGuire Plows. The McGuire Manufacturing Company (later McGuire-Cummings) was apparently a 19th Century maker of railway cars and railway snow removal equipment. Which means that those letters could be more than 110 years old.

These are at N. 3rd Ave. & Washington.