In the span of a decade, Toronto lost two of its most iconic signs, sparking outrage and questions of how the city was rapidly changing before our very eyes. First in 2008, with the removal of the infamous neon rotating vinyl discs that had marked the entrance to the flagship Sam the Record Man store on Yonge Street for almost 40 years. Then in 2017, the glittering Honest Ed’s marquee was dismantled to make way for a new residential development at the south-west corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets. Petitions were signed, op-eds were penned and Facebook groups were formed to protest their removal and share stories of what these signs meant to residents. The conversation turned to heritage preservation and how signage contributes to the visual identity of the city. In both of these instances, what became apparent was the significance of the signs themselves and how they define otherwise unremarkable building facades.
This book is an attempt to document the culture of Toronto through its signs. Cities are shaped by their signage, from the iconic signs that dominate the streetscape to the more modest signs of small businesses, signs offer a glimpse of the occupants contained within the buildings themselves. Signs are accessible to a broad range of commercial tenants, due to the use of rapidly changing illumination technology that keeps the costs of making signs relatively affordable. This results in a more accurate record of the life of the city than architectural styles and buildings ever could.
We’ll explore the advances in signage technology of commercial businesses in chronological order, beginning with the fascia and projecting signs of the 19th Century followed by the sprawling hand painted billboards of EL Ruddy that covered every available blank wall. Then the electric movie theatre marquees and neon signs that peaked in popularity by the 1950s to the more ubiquitous backlit signs that line the streets today. With the evolving nature of signage, we’ll speculate on the future of signs and what the city may look like in the not so distant future. Looking at the myriad of signs that define Toronto, we see the many languages spoken, the colours, flags and symbols that connect to various demographics, and contribute to the visual identity of the city. While Yonge Street is the locus for much of Toronto’s signage history, we’ll also explore the cultures that are represented through signage in three distinct neighbourhoods, including the commercial corridors of Little Jamaica, Tehranto and Chinatown. Tucked alongside these essays are a series of case studies, photo spreads and interviews with sign maker Dizzy Minott, painter Chris Rouleau, scholar Linda Zhang and photographer Tanja-Tiziana.
The interest in signage began with research for my graduate thesis on the history of development in Las Vegas, a city known for its dazzling array of signs that is constantly reinventing itself to attract tourists. This rich history is on display at the Las Vegas Neon Museum which features a collection of signs salvaged from various establishments both on and off the strip. Visitors are guided through the collection by tour guides who tell stories about the businesses behind each sign and their contribution to the history of the area. What became clear was the critical role of conservation and how buildings and their signs convey a historical sense of place.
In the 1960s, architects and educators Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour led an ambitious survey of the new American commercial strip in Las Vegas. They documented the often disregarded building typology that had emerged as a result of the widespread adoption of the automobile as a primary means of travel. These studies were later published in “Learning from Las Vegas” (1972), which positioned the Strip’s “lowbrow” populist buildings as a subject worthy of study amongst architects, just as the pop-art movement had embraced crass commercialism. More importantly, the book identified the prominence of the sign within commercial architecture, relegating the building to its basic functions of providing shelter from the elements.
Interestingly enough, Toronto shares some similarities to Las Vegas in its growth and signage evolution. The opening of the Hoover Dam supplied Las Vegas with an abundant supply of cheap electricity, similar to how the Niagara hydroelectric dam had transformed the streets of Toronto decades earlier. Access to an affordable and reliable source of electricity provided business owners with the opportunity to expand their approach to advertising and utilize electric signs to stand out in an increasingly cluttered urban landscape. This led to elaborate signs that would forever transform the visual identity of the city. (Photo of Yonge St, before 1911 and after)
(Photo of Niagara Falls Mural) The City of Toronto launched the Hydro-Electric System in 1911 with an opulent display designed to catch the public’s attention. Mounted above the front steps of Old City Hall was a hand-painted mural of the Niagara Falls with several strings of electric lights, cascading outward over curious onlookers who had gathered below. When the opening of the electric system was officially announced, water came cascading out of a slit at the top of the mural, drenching the jubilant crowd under the makeshift waterfall. This display would be the harbinger of decadent new electric signs to come and launch a new era in commercial signage largely driven by movie palaces and automobile showrooms.
A group responsible for shaping the visual landscape of the city would be the proponents of the City Beautiful movement. By the end of the 19th Century, signs had taken over every square inch of building surface in urban centres, with mixed sign types, architectural styles, placement and colours in order to stand out from each other. The social reform movement began in the United States and gained traction north of the border with policy makers and residents alike. Tatum Taylor further delves into the campaign to remove projecting signs along Yonge Street in the 1950s in an attempt to beautify the street, a philosophy that continues to influence signage policy in the City of Toronto to this day.
Signage is a reflection of the society it advertises to. While we remember the most vibrant and colourful displays, we can forget how signage has been used to impose discriminatory laws and businesses practices that segregate people on the basis of gender or race. While there were no official segregation laws implemented in Canada, the influence of laws like Jim Crow were apparent north of the border. For instance, some theatres would only allow Black patrons to sit in cordoned off areas or restaurants and hotels would refuse service altogether. Up until the 1970s, drinking establishments had separate sections for men and women with exterior signs that would mark the entrances for each (photo of spadina LCBO). During my research as a heritage architect, I have come across countless historic photographs of large billboards and signs that depict images or words that negatively portray Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) with harmful stereotypes.
Until recently, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ+) establishments remained largely under-represented in the public realm, often relying on coded names, double entendres and discreet signs to reach the community. Prolific queer historian Ed Jackson, chronicles the evolution of signs in and around the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood and how business owners have reached their target demographic over the years.
There are ongoing discussions about where and how to properly display salvaged signs including the famed Honest Ed’s sign. Toronto has its own Neon Museum, spearheaded by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement District (BIA) which has been collecting signs over the past several years. There is hope for an eventual physical location to display these signs but no immediate plans have been made available.
While it would be impossible to include every memorable Toronto sign in this book, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation around the importance of conserving signs and preserving their stories. This can take on many forms beyond restoration of the physical object itself and can include photo documentation, artistic drawing and painting, capturing the stories of sign makers and business owners, sharing nostalgic memories with friends, and so on and so forth. A look at the signs that define Toronto is a reflection of the city’s inhabitants, one that reveals the rich layering of cultures through the languages printed, colours used, and businesses and services provided.
INTRODUCTION by Kurt Kraler
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Re: INTRODUCTION by Kurt Kraler
In the span of a decade, Toronto lost two of its most iconic signs, sparking outrage and questions of how quickly the city was changing before our very eyes. It started in 2008, with the removal of the infamous neon rotating vinyl discs that had marked the entrance to the flagship Sam the Record Man store on Yonge Street for almost 40 years. Then again in 2017, the glittering Honest Ed’s marquee was dismantled to make way for a new residential development at the south-west corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets. Petitions were signed, op-eds were penned and Facebook groups were formed to protest their removal and share stories of what these signs meant to residents. The conversation turned to heritage preservation and how signage contributes to the visual identity of the city. In both of these instances, what became apparent was the significance of the signs themselves and how they often define otherwise unremarkable building facades.
This book is an attempt to document the culture of Toronto through its signs. Cities are shaped by their signage, from the iconic signs that dominate the streetscape to the more modest signs of small businesses. Signs offer a glimpse of the occupants that live and work within the buildings they adorn and are accessible to a broad range of commercial tenants. This is due in large part to innovations in illumination technology that keep the costs of making signs relatively affordable. As a result, signs produce a more accurate record of the life of the city, much more than buildings and architectural styles ever could.
We’ll explore the advances in signage technology of commercial businesses over the years in chronological order, beginning with the fascia and projecting signs of the 19th Century followed by the sprawling hand painted billboards of the EL Ruddy company that covered blank side walls across the city. This is followed by the proliferation of electric signs like movie theatre marquees and neon signs, which peaked in popularity by the 1950s, to the more ubiquitous backlit signs that line the streets today. With the evolving nature of signage, we’ll speculate on the future of signs and what the city may look like in the not so distant future. Looking at the patchwork of signs that define Toronto, we see the many languages, flags, colours, and symbols that broadcast to various demographics, contributing to the collective visual identity of the city.
Downtown Yonge Street is the locus for much of Toronto’s signage history, a commercial strip with retail stores like Sam the Record Man, music venues like L’Coq D’or, and strip joints like Zanzibar, all competing for eyeballs. This eventually gave way to the ultimate saturation of signs that is known as Yonge-Dundas Square with billboards covering wide swaths of building facades and projecting from rooftops. Michael McCelland interviews architect James D. Brown and city councillor Kyle Rae about the origins of Yonge-Dundas Square and we check-in with architecture critic Lisa Rochon on the evolution of the Square over the past 20 years.
Beyond downtown Yonge Street, we document the cultures that are represented through signage in three distinct Toronto neighbourhoods, including the commercial corridors of Little Jamaica on Eglinton Avenue W, the Iranian community (known as Tehranto) on Yonge Street between Sheppard Avenue and Elgin Mills, and the historic downtown Chinatown on Spadina Avenue. There are also a series of case studies, iconic sign features, and photo spreads that delve into the stories behind the signs that populate the city’s streets. We’ve also included interviews with several individuals who have documented or directly contributed to Toronto’s signage landscape including sign maker Dizzy Minott, painter Chris Rouleau, scholar Linda Zhang, and photographer Tanja-Tiziana.
My interest in signage began with graduate thesis research into the history of development in Las Vegas, a city known for its dazzling array of signs that are constantly evolving in a bid to attract tourists. This rich history is on display at the Las Vegas Neon Museum which features a collection of signs salvaged from various establishments both on and off the strip. Visitors are guided through the collection by tour guides who tell stories about the businesses behind each sign and their contribution to the history of the area. What became clear was the critical role of conservation and how buildings and their signs convey a historical sense of place.
In the 1960s, architects and educators Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour led an ambitious survey of the new American commercial strip that had emerged in Las Vegas. They documented the often disregarded building typology, a result of the widespread adoption of the automobile as a primary means of travel. These studies were later published in <i> Learning from Las Vegas</i> (1972), which positioned the Strip’s “lowbrow” populist buildings as a subject worthy of study amongst architects, just as the pop-art movement had embraced crass commercialism. More importantly, the book identified the prominence of the sign within commercial architecture, relegating the building to its basic functions of providing conditioned space and shelter from the elements.
Interestingly enough, Toronto shares some similarities to Las Vegas in its growth and signage evolution. The opening of the Hoover Dam supplied Las Vegas with an abundant supply of cheap electricity, similar to how the Niagara hydroelectric dam had transformed the streets of Toronto decades earlier. Access to an affordable and reliable source of electricity provided business owners with the opportunity to expand their approach to advertising and utilize electric signs to stand out in an increasingly cluttered urban landscape. This led to elaborate signs that would forever transform the visual identity of the city. [Photo of Yonge St, before 1911 and after]
[Photo of Niagara Falls Mural] The City of Toronto launched the Hydro-Electric System in 1911 with an opulent display designed to catch the public’s attention. Mounted above the front steps of Old City Hall was a hand-painted mural of the Niagara Falls with several strings of electric lights, cascading outwards over the gathering of curious onlookers below. When the opening of the electric system was officially announced, water came cascading out of a slit at the top of the mural, drenching the jubilant crowd under the makeshift waterfall. This display would be the harbinger of decadent electric signs to come and launched a new era in commercial signage that was largely driven by movie palaces and automobile showrooms.
By the end of the 19th Century, signs had taken over every square inch of building surface in urban centres, with businesses resorting to a variety of sign types, styles, placement, and colours in a bid to stand out from each other. The City Beautiful movement emerged as a result in an effort to clean up city streets and reduce urban blight. The social reform movement was started by a group of concerned citizens in the United States, advocating for fewer signs and more trees, quickly gaining traction north of the border with policy makers and residents alike. Tatum Taylor Chaubal further delves into the campaign to remove projecting signs along Yonge Street in the 1950s in an attempt to beautify the street, a philosophy that continues to influence signage policy in the City of Toronto to this day.
Signage is a reflection of the society it advertises to. While we remember the most vibrant and colourful displays, we can forget how signage has been used to impose discriminatory laws and business practices that segregated people on the basis of gender or race. While there were no official segregation laws implemented in Canada, the influence of American laws like Jim Crow were apparent north of the border. For instance, some theatres would only allow Black patrons to sit in cordoned off areas demarcated by signs or restaurants and hotels would refuse service altogether. Up until the 1970s, drinking establishments had separate sections for men and women with exterior signs that would mark the entrances for each [photo of spadina LCBO]. During my research as a heritage architect, I have come across countless historic photographs of large billboards that depict images or words that portray racist stereotypes of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).
It’s critical to note which communities may be under-represented through signage. Until recently, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S+) establishments remained largely unseen in the public realm, often relying on coded names, double entendres and discreet signs to reach the community. Prolific queer historian Ed Jackson, chronicles the evolution of signs in and around the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood and how business owners have creatively reached their target demographic. Over the years, Indigenous businesses have also forged a presence in their respective neighbourhoods with distinctive signs including Nish Dish, Pow Wow Cafe, and Tea N Bannock. [photos of Indigenous business signs] While businesses only form one aspect of a community, they powerfully claim space on city streets and their signs render visible cultural values and symbols.
There are ongoing discussions about where and how to properly display salvaged signs, including the famed Honest Ed’s sign. Toronto has its own Neon Museum initiative which has been collecting signs over the past several years, spearheaded by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (DYBIA). There is hope for an eventual physical location to display these signs but no immediate plans have been made available. However, the Neon Museum should be a last resort for heritage restoration and efforts should be made to retain signs in situ. The reason a sign is often considered significant is a result of its surroundings and the unique placement of the sign on a building facade. For instance, the iconic Filmore’s sign is distinctive for its location on Dundas Street East where the road curves north, a block away from the Jarvis Street intersection. The sign is purposefully mounted on the prow of the building and extends the full height of the facade, attracting attention in several directions. Imagine how difficult it would be to recreate its historic prominence and site specific configuration in the context of a neon museum.
Restoring historically significant signs in place should be a priority as it lends historical weight and significance to a building and its surrounding neighbourhood. Signs should also be restored with their original technology. The recent practice of replacing neon signs with LED strips may not offer as many advantages as initially thought. Vancouver sign historian John Atkin notes that plastic LED strips do not last nearly as long as glass neon tubes, are too intense and do not emit ambient light on the sidewalks below. Colour LEDs also consume a comparable amount of energy as neon signs, challenging the notion that they’re more energy efficient. It has also been discovered that LED lights don’t photograph very well, with film productions often resorting to neon since LED signs produce less than desirable white hotspots on camera.
While it would be impossible to include every memorable Toronto sign in this book, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation around the importance of conserving signs and preserving their stories. This can take on many forms beyond restoration of the physical object itself and can include photo documentation, artistic drawing and painting, capturing the stories of sign makers and business owners, sharing nostalgic memories with friends, and so on and so forth. A look at the signs that define Toronto is a reflection of the city’s inhabitants, one that reveals the rich layering of cultures through the languages displayed, colours used, and types of businesses and services provided.
This book is an attempt to document the culture of Toronto through its signs. Cities are shaped by their signage, from the iconic signs that dominate the streetscape to the more modest signs of small businesses. Signs offer a glimpse of the occupants that live and work within the buildings they adorn and are accessible to a broad range of commercial tenants. This is due in large part to innovations in illumination technology that keep the costs of making signs relatively affordable. As a result, signs produce a more accurate record of the life of the city, much more than buildings and architectural styles ever could.
We’ll explore the advances in signage technology of commercial businesses over the years in chronological order, beginning with the fascia and projecting signs of the 19th Century followed by the sprawling hand painted billboards of the EL Ruddy company that covered blank side walls across the city. This is followed by the proliferation of electric signs like movie theatre marquees and neon signs, which peaked in popularity by the 1950s, to the more ubiquitous backlit signs that line the streets today. With the evolving nature of signage, we’ll speculate on the future of signs and what the city may look like in the not so distant future. Looking at the patchwork of signs that define Toronto, we see the many languages, flags, colours, and symbols that broadcast to various demographics, contributing to the collective visual identity of the city.
Downtown Yonge Street is the locus for much of Toronto’s signage history, a commercial strip with retail stores like Sam the Record Man, music venues like L’Coq D’or, and strip joints like Zanzibar, all competing for eyeballs. This eventually gave way to the ultimate saturation of signs that is known as Yonge-Dundas Square with billboards covering wide swaths of building facades and projecting from rooftops. Michael McCelland interviews architect James D. Brown and city councillor Kyle Rae about the origins of Yonge-Dundas Square and we check-in with architecture critic Lisa Rochon on the evolution of the Square over the past 20 years.
Beyond downtown Yonge Street, we document the cultures that are represented through signage in three distinct Toronto neighbourhoods, including the commercial corridors of Little Jamaica on Eglinton Avenue W, the Iranian community (known as Tehranto) on Yonge Street between Sheppard Avenue and Elgin Mills, and the historic downtown Chinatown on Spadina Avenue. There are also a series of case studies, iconic sign features, and photo spreads that delve into the stories behind the signs that populate the city’s streets. We’ve also included interviews with several individuals who have documented or directly contributed to Toronto’s signage landscape including sign maker Dizzy Minott, painter Chris Rouleau, scholar Linda Zhang, and photographer Tanja-Tiziana.
My interest in signage began with graduate thesis research into the history of development in Las Vegas, a city known for its dazzling array of signs that are constantly evolving in a bid to attract tourists. This rich history is on display at the Las Vegas Neon Museum which features a collection of signs salvaged from various establishments both on and off the strip. Visitors are guided through the collection by tour guides who tell stories about the businesses behind each sign and their contribution to the history of the area. What became clear was the critical role of conservation and how buildings and their signs convey a historical sense of place.
In the 1960s, architects and educators Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour led an ambitious survey of the new American commercial strip that had emerged in Las Vegas. They documented the often disregarded building typology, a result of the widespread adoption of the automobile as a primary means of travel. These studies were later published in <i> Learning from Las Vegas</i> (1972), which positioned the Strip’s “lowbrow” populist buildings as a subject worthy of study amongst architects, just as the pop-art movement had embraced crass commercialism. More importantly, the book identified the prominence of the sign within commercial architecture, relegating the building to its basic functions of providing conditioned space and shelter from the elements.
Interestingly enough, Toronto shares some similarities to Las Vegas in its growth and signage evolution. The opening of the Hoover Dam supplied Las Vegas with an abundant supply of cheap electricity, similar to how the Niagara hydroelectric dam had transformed the streets of Toronto decades earlier. Access to an affordable and reliable source of electricity provided business owners with the opportunity to expand their approach to advertising and utilize electric signs to stand out in an increasingly cluttered urban landscape. This led to elaborate signs that would forever transform the visual identity of the city. [Photo of Yonge St, before 1911 and after]
[Photo of Niagara Falls Mural] The City of Toronto launched the Hydro-Electric System in 1911 with an opulent display designed to catch the public’s attention. Mounted above the front steps of Old City Hall was a hand-painted mural of the Niagara Falls with several strings of electric lights, cascading outwards over the gathering of curious onlookers below. When the opening of the electric system was officially announced, water came cascading out of a slit at the top of the mural, drenching the jubilant crowd under the makeshift waterfall. This display would be the harbinger of decadent electric signs to come and launched a new era in commercial signage that was largely driven by movie palaces and automobile showrooms.
By the end of the 19th Century, signs had taken over every square inch of building surface in urban centres, with businesses resorting to a variety of sign types, styles, placement, and colours in a bid to stand out from each other. The City Beautiful movement emerged as a result in an effort to clean up city streets and reduce urban blight. The social reform movement was started by a group of concerned citizens in the United States, advocating for fewer signs and more trees, quickly gaining traction north of the border with policy makers and residents alike. Tatum Taylor Chaubal further delves into the campaign to remove projecting signs along Yonge Street in the 1950s in an attempt to beautify the street, a philosophy that continues to influence signage policy in the City of Toronto to this day.
Signage is a reflection of the society it advertises to. While we remember the most vibrant and colourful displays, we can forget how signage has been used to impose discriminatory laws and business practices that segregated people on the basis of gender or race. While there were no official segregation laws implemented in Canada, the influence of American laws like Jim Crow were apparent north of the border. For instance, some theatres would only allow Black patrons to sit in cordoned off areas demarcated by signs or restaurants and hotels would refuse service altogether. Up until the 1970s, drinking establishments had separate sections for men and women with exterior signs that would mark the entrances for each [photo of spadina LCBO]. During my research as a heritage architect, I have come across countless historic photographs of large billboards that depict images or words that portray racist stereotypes of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).
It’s critical to note which communities may be under-represented through signage. Until recently, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S+) establishments remained largely unseen in the public realm, often relying on coded names, double entendres and discreet signs to reach the community. Prolific queer historian Ed Jackson, chronicles the evolution of signs in and around the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood and how business owners have creatively reached their target demographic. Over the years, Indigenous businesses have also forged a presence in their respective neighbourhoods with distinctive signs including Nish Dish, Pow Wow Cafe, and Tea N Bannock. [photos of Indigenous business signs] While businesses only form one aspect of a community, they powerfully claim space on city streets and their signs render visible cultural values and symbols.
There are ongoing discussions about where and how to properly display salvaged signs, including the famed Honest Ed’s sign. Toronto has its own Neon Museum initiative which has been collecting signs over the past several years, spearheaded by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (DYBIA). There is hope for an eventual physical location to display these signs but no immediate plans have been made available. However, the Neon Museum should be a last resort for heritage restoration and efforts should be made to retain signs in situ. The reason a sign is often considered significant is a result of its surroundings and the unique placement of the sign on a building facade. For instance, the iconic Filmore’s sign is distinctive for its location on Dundas Street East where the road curves north, a block away from the Jarvis Street intersection. The sign is purposefully mounted on the prow of the building and extends the full height of the facade, attracting attention in several directions. Imagine how difficult it would be to recreate its historic prominence and site specific configuration in the context of a neon museum.
Restoring historically significant signs in place should be a priority as it lends historical weight and significance to a building and its surrounding neighbourhood. Signs should also be restored with their original technology. The recent practice of replacing neon signs with LED strips may not offer as many advantages as initially thought. Vancouver sign historian John Atkin notes that plastic LED strips do not last nearly as long as glass neon tubes, are too intense and do not emit ambient light on the sidewalks below. Colour LEDs also consume a comparable amount of energy as neon signs, challenging the notion that they’re more energy efficient. It has also been discovered that LED lights don’t photograph very well, with film productions often resorting to neon since LED signs produce less than desirable white hotspots on camera.
While it would be impossible to include every memorable Toronto sign in this book, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation around the importance of conserving signs and preserving their stories. This can take on many forms beyond restoration of the physical object itself and can include photo documentation, artistic drawing and painting, capturing the stories of sign makers and business owners, sharing nostalgic memories with friends, and so on and so forth. A look at the signs that define Toronto is a reflection of the city’s inhabitants, one that reveals the rich layering of cultures through the languages displayed, colours used, and types of businesses and services provided.