Unbeknownst to many Vancouverites, this city once boasted the finest display of neon this side of New York. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but the city was definitely bright with “liquid light” — there were 18,000 neon signs in the Lower Mainland in the late 1950s, when the city fathers equated neon with sleaze and ordered them removed.
Most ofthe signs — made in Vancouver by a company that had won one of the early North American licenses for neon, and a number of unlicensed imitators — were dumped. But when local historians revived interest in neon in the late ‘90s, a few collections came out of boxes and basements.
The Vancouver Museum (1100 Chestnut Street, Kitsilano, 604-736-4431) owns some exceptional signs, some ofwhich are on permanent exhibit in the 1950s gallery. They include a Silver Grill Café sign and window outline of dogwood flowers (the provincial flower); a Palm Ice Cream tabletop sign (1945); a garage parking sign (1955); and a sign that hung at a Loggers Employment Agency (1950).
The museum co-hosts occasional tours of the remaining neon signs in the city. While the coach will swing down Granville Street for a look at the notable sign on the Vogue Theatre, among others, it may also take in what was arguably the city’s most remarkable neon — the huge, vertical “Niagara” hotel sign, complete with plummeting falls. A few years ago, Ramada bought the hotel (435 West Pender Street) and replaced the Niagara name with its own, rendering the sign something of an absurdity.
A fine piece of restored neon fronts Dunn’s Tailors (480 Granville Street, Downtown). And just east of Main Street, the Ovaltine Café ( 251 East Hastings Street, next to a hotel whose sign reads “crackheads and junkies need not apply,” East Vancouver) has long been presided over by a hanging swirl and inward-pointing arrow perfect in scale and style.
A neon sign, said to cost an unspeakable amount, has gone up over the newest Café Crepe (874 Granville Street, Downtown, 604-806-0845). There is general rejoicing about this next step in the revival of the city’s neon — and in a stylish font at that!
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