Five Minutes at Queen and Bay

Corner of Queen West and Bay Street in Toronto

The Stars in Our Sky

The Logo Cities symposium might be over and done with but the Logo Cities website lives on. It contains a wealth of fascinating information on signage and commercial logos in cities around the world. A good introduction is the short comic strip “City Stars,” pictured above and created by Grant Collins, one of the research assistants employed by project creator Matt Soar. A variety of papers presented at the May symposium are also available online.

What’s new is Almost Architecture, an interactive film about highrise signs in Montreal that is worth a look despite a frustrating interface. It opens with a clip of the now-famous Farine Five Roses sign on Montreal’s waterfront, the potential dismantling of which did a lot to bring attention to the issue of historic signs in the city. From there, the film goes on to feature interviews from local experts like signmaker Bill Kovacevic, who talks about the tension between architects and the signs that festoon their buildings: it detracts from the “purity” of their architecture, he says.

I got a sense of that last fall when I spoke with Derek Drummond, a professor of architecture at McGill University, about Montreal’s ghost signs. He dismissed them outright, arguing that their cultural, historical and aesthetic importance was negligible. Ultimately, he said, they distract from what’s more important: architecture. “I find it really hard to get emotionally connected to any sign of any sort,” he says in Almost Architecture. Although I can certainly understand why he feels this way, I can’t help but disagree. The urban experience draws from more than just architecture; all of the seemingly superfluous stuff, like signs, tell us just as much about the life of the city.

More

M-a-r-k-e-t Scrabble

Giant game of scrabble in Kensington Market

Where Ulysses S. Grant Buys His Choi Sum

Among the dozens of groceries, butchers, bakeries and other businesses on Spadina Avenue in Toronto is Asian Farm, an oddly-named supermarket that stands out for two different reasons: the fact that it is open 24 hours a day and the fact that it features a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant on its sign. What exactly does a nineteenth century American president have to do with a place where you can buy fried tofu, bok choy and live turtles at three o’clock in the morning?

Not much, is the obvious answer. A Google search on Asian Farm’s strange sign reveals a certain record of insalubrity—it was closed for two days in February because “the operator failed to prevent gross unsanitary conditions; [failed] to provide adequate pest control; [and failed] to maintain room free of animals,” among other things—but no obvious connections to Grant. Perhaps it is an homage of sorts, to a president who, unlike those who followed him, actually encouraged Chinese immigration to the United States: in 1868 he signed the Burlingame Treaty with China, which secured the rights of Chinese nationals living in the US. In 1880, however, a few years after he left office, the treaty was amended to restrict Chinese immigration; in 1882, it was completely overturned with the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

But this hardly explains why Grant is found on the sign of a Toronto supermarket. One hint might come from the portrait itself: look closely and you will see that it is identical to the portrait of Grant found on the American fifty dollar bill. Considering this relationship with with money, then, it is reasonable to assume that the owners of Asian Farm consider Grant’s image to be a symbol of wealth or good fortune.

Still, this raises more questions than it answers: why Grant and not the more recognizable image of George Washington, who is found on the one dollar bill? Alternately, why stop at fifty bucks when you can have one hundred, in the form of Ben Franklin?

Hong Kong Signs: Pawn Shop

Photo by lazybone cafe

Spend some time walking the streets of Hong Kong and you’ll notice a peculiar neon sign over and over again. It looks vaguely like a shuttlecock heading straight for the ground.

Turns out it’s the standard sign for pawn shops, which, in Hong Kong, are nothing at all like their North American counterparts. They are most often found in older neighbourhoods, usually at the base of a walkup apartment building. Apparently, Hong Kong pawnbrokers act only as money lenders, holding your property as collateral; if you don’t pay up on time, it’s sold to vendors at one of the city’s many flea markets. Inside, the counters are so high that you must reach up above your head to offer whatever belongings you want to exchange for cash.

So what about the sign? According to the Wikipedia entry on pawnbrokers, in which Hong Kong warrants its own section, it is meant to represent a “bat holding a coin,” the bat symbolizing fortune and the coin representing benefits. But its origins are kind of incidental: the pawn shop sign is so distinctive that it is instantly recognizable wherever you go.

Wide Angle Off 17th

Lincoln Avenue

Hidden in a corner of downtown Montreal, on a residential street named Lincoln Avenue, is a treasure trove of old street signs. They are in English, but surprisingly enough, they do not appear to have been taped over. Among the signs is an especially rare kind with white lettering and a blue background; it must predate the 1950s. Best of all, the signs are mounted on buildings rather than on free-standing signposts.

Sunday Afternoon in Jeanne Mance Park

Man arguing with Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2007

Montreal from Above, 1930

It turns out that Natural Resources Canada has a fairly impressive collection of old aerial photographs. They’ve been kind enough to provide a few samples online; among those are some interesting shots of Montreal from above taken in 1930 and 1952.

The above photo shows the Jacques Cartier Bridge and Lafontaine Park at bottom and Windsor Station at top. In a way, it’s almost like a photographic version of that 1894 map I posted a couple of months ago: you can see how the city was knit together by development before being torn apart by the megaprojects, highways and road widenings of the 1960s. Just look at the area between Victoria Square and the two train stations near the top of the image: this part of town, so densely packed with buildings and crisscrossed by small streets and lanes, has essentially vanished.

More