In the Saddle Again

I'm back! It's been rather a long time since I've had a new ghost sign post, primarily because I've largely run out of interesting signs that inspired me to dust off the old laptop and throw up a post. But Andy Sturdevant's Stroll of the week (always good inspiration for new places to explore in the Twin Cities), led me to some new material. I hopped on my bike and started pedaling up North Lyndale.

Okay, so it's not the greatest place to bike in the world. There was nary a bike lane, traffic was relatively swift moving and it turns out that it's pretty much up hill the whole way too. But at least traffic going north was relatively light, so I wasn't left fearing for my life.

More importantly, it led me to a spur of old railroad tracks that I hadn't inspected before. These places are always good for a ghost sign or two, and this one didn't disappoint. Okay, so it didn't really take much inspecting to come across the building shown above, which is pretty prominently on Lyndale right near North 44th Ave.

As you may be able to tell from the realty sign in the front yard (partially obscured by a small tree), the place seems to have been made available for reuse, so I don't think the Machine Specialties Manufacturing Company is still in operation at this location. Nonetheless, it has a Google place page for some reason, so maybe it was operating here not that long ago? Or maybe someone created the page because there's such a prominent sign?

I didn't think I'd learn much by searching for such a generic name, so I went in search of the realty listing to see if maybe they knew something about the history of this building. Apparently history is not a big selling point when you're trying to move tens of thousands of square feet of industrial space, but this offering document (pdf) does contain some interior pictures of the office space. They are both interesting in the sense that now you know what it looks like on the inside and uninteresting in the sense that they aren't very interesting at all. If you know what I mean.

But that document does give us a clue in that we now know that the property's seller is Zimmerschied, Inc., which leads us to its president, John Zimmerschied, telling the Business Journal back in 2004 that high steel prices and foreign competition were driving his small machine shop out of business. Apparently they made parts for equipment that is used to unload grain barges.

Stop Me If You've Seen This One Before

Or better yet, don't.  Because if you've been following along, you have, indeed, scene this one before.  Or to be a bit more accurate, you've seen other parts of these "extensive works" before.  This one is a little down the railroad tracks from the one you've seen before, but presumably they were all part of that same facility at some time.

The news here, if you can call it that, is that I'd swear the missing part of the sign says "Albany" and "New York," although I have to admit it could be bad memories of the bar exam influencing my intuition.  I don't know why it would say that, of course, as it seems that they may have had offices in the Lumber Exchange downtown, but whatever.  Maybe they just had a special affinity for the capitol of the Empire State.

Let's finish up by looking a up a bit (please shield you eyes from the sun):

Soylent Purple?

This is going to be a quick one.  I've been home sick from work, which means being both bored and not terribly motivated, which seemed like a good time to put up this sign.  It's not paint.  It's not technically a ghost. But I liked the combination of the aging painted metal sign and the aging metal alarm.

A Yahoo user says Global Surplus Machinery is a scientist's dream, filled with both good stuff and junk.  This is a pretty cool picture of the place from behind during twilight.  Otherwise, the place doesn't seem to have much of a footprint on the interwebs.

The alarm is from Viking.  I guess that's probably this one.  But maybe it's this one.  At least it isn't this one.

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.

Featuring Cedric The Entertainer?

It was closed when I went by, and seems to have been for awhile, but this is sort of from the 'hood.  Glenwood Barbers, is, surprisingly, on Glenwood Avenue in North Minneapolis.   It looks like it might have been there for awhile, but I've found very little about this business.  About all I've got is that others have snapped in on Flickr.  

Keeping the Metric System Down

Back in North Minneapolis, we have Bardwell-Robinson Co., mill works of high grade interior finish. The company dates to 1873, via various name and ownership configurations and locations. These "extensive works" were built in 1885 and were one of twelve remaining companies in Minneapolis involved in the manufacture of sash, doors and blinds listed in Isaac Atwater's, History of the City of Minneapolis published in 1893.

You can get a copy of their Universal Millwork Design book, No. 20, from Amazon if you're willing to spend $99. At least it looks old.

Charles Bardwell, a civil war veteran, built the Bardwell-Ferrant House, featuring, no surprise, fancy woodwork and moldings. Despite periodic attempts at preservation, the house has been through some tough times. His son, L.J. Bardwell was born in 1872 and eventually came to be president of the company after his father's death in 1892. L.J. was active in Republican politics, but I've yet to be able to connect him to Winfield W. Bardwell, who ran for judge in 1836 with the slogan "Ask your lawyer -- he knows!" If that isn't sage advice, I don't know what is. (It looks like they are not related, but the slogan was too good not to include)

Not to be forgotten, the Robinson family has it origins in County Cork, Ireland, where my great-great-grandfather was born before immigrating (like many, many others from one of the poorer parts of that country). Like Judge Bardwell, H.A. Robinson (son of the Robinson that is one of the company's namesakes) was a mason. Hmm.

Perfect Harmony

Coke's "It's the real thing" slogan seemed familiar to me, so I was surprised that it can apparently be dated fairly specifically to 1969, leading into the famous "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" ad and song. I would have thought that such a famous slogan would lead to an abundance of online trivia, so I was a little surprised when I didn't get much beyond wikipedia and that image searching lead me pretty directly to two Flickr entries for this very sign. It's on Washington Ave. N. near Broadway.

My Google image search also turned up this, which I had to use because it features "Buddy Christ" from Kevin Smith's Dogma. I can't tell for sure, but while the site seems sincere, I would guess that the author knew the source of this image. But it's more fun to think that he wasn't in on the joke.

On an unrelated note, it seems the Witt's mystery needn't have been quite so puzzling, at least if I had been able to ask the folks who decorated the Lund's in Nordeast. I snapped this iPhone shot of the vintage photographs behind the cashiers:

Anyone Know If BeerSignsOfMinneapolis.com Is Taken?

Clearly we need a palate cleanser to remove the sour taste of foreign beer from foreign lands, so why not some more beer? And what's better than local beer? And what could be more refreshing than one building with signs for both The Beer Refreshing and The Friendly Beer? I've talked about both before, but I found a discussion of the history of the Grain Belt brand (hiding so subtly on the Grain Belt website), so I've got a fresh link for you. It's been a long time a-brewing, but there was no way I could pass up the discussion of the '60s ad campaign feature the sign-painting duo of Stanley and Albert.

As for the building itself, it's Lee's Liquor Lounge. I've never been inside, and have to admit it looks a little seedy (being on the wrong side of the freeway) from the outside. That may not be fair, and it's certainly a name that's familiar, perhaps as a live music venue, so I'll have to give it a visit. As the history section on its website says, the bar dates to when this used to be an industrialized part of the city. Those days are long gone, as the fact that I would be able to see it from my bedroom if there wasn't another high rise housing complex in the way suggests.

The Guys From Winger Could Probably Help

I couldn't get too close to this one, and was limited to iPhone photography as I was on my bike, but I've started to venture a tiny bit out of the downtown core. This one is visible from the west bank Mississippi bike path, and drew me a tiny bit west and across the railroad tracks. This is and was a highly industrial area. The building abuts the tracks and says both "Diamond Iron Works Inc." and "Mahr Mfg. Company."

The first apparently dates to the 1880s as a repair shop for saw mill, flour mill and other industrial machinery. The company apparently assembled machinery and crushers to be sold under the brand names of others.

The second apparently was a division of the former that was active from 1937 to 1953. The historical society has a good picture from 1954 with sings for the company prominently on display. I'm not sure that this is the same location, but there is also a good one of Mahr furnaces loaded on a rail car from 1922 and a shop interior from 1926. Today it is K&K metal recycling.