Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York's Past

by Frank Mastropolo

New York City's oldest neighborhoods are downtown, where scores of timeworn ads have improbably survived for decades. These "ghost signs" hold the secrets of businesses and products that vanished decades ago. Clues to our jobs, schools, places of worship, cafés, and concert halls lurk in their faded outlines. Journalist and television producer Frank Mastropolo brings more than 100 of these signs to life through insightful commentary on the history of downtown's distinct neighborhoods and the eclectic businesses that anchored them during the first half of the 20th century. The collection offers an important and timely look at New York City's rich economic and social fabric, especially today, when long-established businesses are rapidly being priced out of their neighborhoods.

• ISBN13: 9780764358319
• Publish Date: 28 November 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Schiffer Publishing Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Ghost Signs is a neat photography compilation of long vanished icons from earlier times in New York City which still exist on the walls and architecture downtown. Due out 28th Nov 2019 from Schiffer, it's 128 pages and will be available in hardcover format.

This is a fascinating look at vanished markets, trades, businesses, and places in NYC. It also includes a lot of really interesting history about the working conditions, materials, and processes the 'wall dogs' used to paint these icons in New Yorkers' vanished landscape.

The modern photographs are interspersed with historical photos from archives and public collections, giving an interesting in-situ contrast between the original and current. The photos are arranged roughly thematically: shopping, working, meeting, discoveries, make-believe, and going-going-going-almost gone.

Author/photographer Frank Mastropolo has a keen eye for composition and his photography is artistic and technically brilliant. Many of the photos are touching and nostalgic. There are signs not just for vanished businesses but for whole vanished swaths of culture and for items and services which don't even exist in any meaningful way in the the modern world (millinery, corsets, children's laxatives, patent medicines, etc).

The photographs, of course, are the main attraction, but the annotations are wonderful; small windows into the actual history of the people, many of them immigrants, whose businesses were literally building a new world in the New World. The book includes an extensive bibliography which will keep armchair historians busy for hours. There is also a concise index with a listing of most (all?) of the businesses included in the book.

Wonderful book which would make a great gift for lovers of New York history, urban archaeologists, and fans of architecture.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.