Have you ever noticed a great old sign in your neighborhood, perhaps above a corner store, laundromat or other local business? You may not have noticed it until it was no longer there – after the store closed and became a Popeye’s or maybe a Cricket Wireless, changing the vibe of the neighborhood.
David Barnett hates this change in mood – so much that he has dedicated his life to stopping it.
Barnett is the driving force behind Noble Signs, a sign-making studio he co-founded in 2013 out of “appreciation for New York City’s disappearing classic signs.” He is also the founder of the New York Sign Museum on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The museum was founded in 2019 with the mission of preserving the great old signs that are torn down every year and would otherwise end up in the junkyard.
“I’m glad I’m alive,” Barnett said during a tour of the museum, which also serves as his workshop. “I’ve craned my neck to see a sign, and I’ve almost crashed my car more times than I can remember.”
He’s salvaged classic signs from Essex Card Shop, whose sign was replaced after a fire in 2022, and from Queen, the red-sauce Italian restaurant that ruled Brooklyn Heights for 62 years before closing in 2020. He has dozens of signs from bodegas, pharmacies, auto repair shops and Jewish delis. Some are small. Others are taller than him or jut out far from the bed of his box truck.
“Handcrafted signs with so much personality really shaped the aesthetic experience of living in a New York City neighborhood, perhaps even more than the architecture,” Barnett said. “The trend we wanted to fight against was to find that character, that thing that makes interacting with the environment fun – that personality and playfulness that just isn’t the norm anymore.”
The museum and studio’s parallel missions of preservation and re-creation complement each other, he said. Every old sign they save teaches them something about how to make their own sign.
“You can design something that looks classic, but if you don’t do it in a classic way, it might feel artificial,” Barnett said.
A sign for Queen, the red sauce Italian restaurant in Brooklyn Heights that closed in 2020 after 62 years.
Ryan Kailath / Gothamist
Barnett keeps a mental map of great old signs in his head that he checks regularly. When he hears that a well-signposted business is about to go out of business, he heads there.
“The first thing I usually say is, ‘Hey, I love your old sign. Do you have any plans for it?'” he said. “Often people say, ‘Oh, that old thing?'”
Barnett flashes his card and explains that he represents a real company, is insured, and will remove the sign for free. He estimates his success rate is less than 50%.
“The irony is that people often prefer to pay literally thousands of dollars for someone to come and take the sign away,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
Barnett suspects one of the reasons is simple – and very New York City-like. As soon as you tell someone you want something, they start to wonder if they can get a better deal somewhere else.
Unfortunately, this is not usually possible, he said.
“A lot of these signs would be worth a lot of money if they were 50% smaller,” Barnett said. “But who’s going to take a 30-foot sign?”
The signs in the New York Sign Museum vary in size and style.
Ryan Kailath / Gothamist
Signs of the times
Barnett said that before the Instagram era, sign making was even more of a dead art form. Popular brush lettering and neon accounts have helped revive interest and spread knowledge.
Before that, he recalls scouring libraries and eBay for old books on the craft. He learned about 20th-century signmaking and the industry’s mid-century giants, like Silverescent Neon, which made signs in Coney Island and Brooklyn, and Artkraft Strauss, which designed iconic signs in Times Square.
“Before neon, there were lightbulbs, and before lightbulbs, the original lighted marquees in Times Square were made by cutting letters out of sheet metal and filling them with candles,” Barnett said.
One of his favorite signs is the Canal Rubber Supply Co. sign in Lower Manhattan. Barnett had the honor of working with the company last year to restore its classic sign.
The owner of J & R Television and Air Conditioning said it made his retirement after decades in the industry a little easier knowing his sign would be preserved in the New York Sign Museum.
Ryan Kailath / Gothamist
Museum staff were in Park Slope last month and removed a J & R Television and Air Conditioning sign.
Owner Ralph DiCerbo has worked behind the counter since he was 12 years old. His father opened the store in 1953.
“I’m glad to be able to retire, but it’s very bittersweet,” DiCerbo said. “I grew up here, I know all the customers. We have a lot of old people who rely on us to change their batteries, tell them what vacuum bag they need, the little things.”
He said knowing his sign would go to a museum helped ease the tension.
Several film production companies were interested in taking the sign — the sign has appeared in movies, television, graphic novels and even the video game “Grand Theft Auto,” Di Cerbo said — but the family voted and decided it should belong to Barnett instead.
“If we want to see it, I could bring my grandchildren one day, if I ever have any,” he said. “And say, ‘Hey, that’s where your great-grandfather started.'”
