Ghost signs of San Francisco: Forgotten treasures hiding in plain sight

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If you think San Francisco has changed beyond recognition recently, try this: Take a walk downtown and look closely at the sides of as many buildings as you can. You'll find an ever-changing history of the city, dating back more than 100 years, hiding in plain sight.

SF teems with old, sometimes-elaborate, hand-painted signs and ads, some for businesses that no longer exist. The painters who made them were part of the "gig economy" long before Uber. These corporate murals have a name, "ghost signs," and one local artist took it upon herself to track all 300-plus of them.

Kasey Smith, an artist and part-time tour guide who lives in Oakland, started the San Francisco Ghost Sign Mapping Project in 2011 – in part because she was inspired by a similar project in Philadelphia. What started as a quirky photography project turned into a form of urban archaeology that's probably the most extensive of its kind in America.

To this day you can find early-1900s ads for Wrigley's gum, Coca-Cola, beer before Prohibition, and a 7-Up ad on the side of a garage that's held up incredibly well because it's protected from the sun. The most common signs, Smith has found, are for MJB Coffee and Owl Cigars.

"If you told me five years ago I would still be working on this, I would have laughed," Smith said during a recent ghost sign tour of the Tenderloin, where she used to work. "When I first sought out to do it, I was just going to document the signs as they were. I didn't have any notion that I was going to upkeep it."

Photo: San Francisco Ghost Sign Mapping Project A partial view of the ghost sign mapping project in SF.

Some signs are now faded, obscured by newer buildings, or destroyed from construction. But Smith has found and pinned every ghost sign she could find in SF using Google Maps. She counts 367, though she concedes there are probably more she hasn't found in the outlying parts of the city.

She started by walking around every block in the Tenderloin and SoMa four times, making note of the type of sign, what brand it represented, and whether it's been restored, faded to the point of indecipherable, or destroyed. When she can't find a sign on street level, she'll look for it from above on Google Satellite View.

It's a project that requires constant upkeep, thanks to the changes to San Francisco's architecture. One sign might be torn down with a building, another might be uncovered after 60 years because the high-rise next to it went down. For example, the "Eat Carnation Mush" ad on Market Street that was revealed in 2011.

While showing me around, Smith pointed out one of her most recent discoveries, on the side of Star Market on Geary and Leavenworth. A billboard came down in February, revealing a well-preserved ghost sign with an ad for Rainier Beer (brewed in SF from 1916-1920), an old school phone number reading "TUXEDO9," and porcelain text offering coffee and tea.

With no social media or even neon signs over 100 years ago, businesses advertised themselves with hand-painted signs. And the brick construction that went into so many Tenderloin buildings after the 1906 earthquake and fire gave painters the perfect durable canvas. It wasn't easy work, though.

"Starting the turn of the last century there was a profession that was snarkily called the 'Wall Dogs,' because they worked like dogs and they were chained by a safety leash to the wall," Smith said. "They were basically traveling painters. The wall dogs would have their own designs and mix their own paint."

While many signs were simple lettering jobs for hotels or warehouses, many others show true craftsmanship. Smith's favorite, and perhaps the best-preserved of all, is a large Tenderloin ad for Turkish cigarette Zubelda – offering "The Double Package" – dated to around 100 years ago. It's not even the only Turkish cigarette ad you'll find in the area – they were fashionable with the kids back then.

In the middle of the 20th century, as neon became the popular signage, sign painters were no longer able to find work, and the signs began their decades of decay. But many weren't destroyed completely.

"A place that made sense for advertising in 1915 makes sense for advertising now," Smith said. "So a lot of signs weren't painted over. They were covered by modern billboards."

A few murals have returned to their former glory. Backed by a $41,000 city grant, Precita Eyes Muralists in 2011 restored a cluster of ghost signs near the corner of Eddy and Taylor. The ads are for Coke, Original Joe's, United Railways, and Par-T-Pak beverages, a long-defunct soda company. And they were done the old-fashioned way, with painters on scaffolds.

Smith gives occasional ghost-sign tours, such as this one in April for Atlas Obscura. You can visit her website for news of her latest adventures.

Don't want to wait for a tour? Just check out the above slideshow for just some of the ghost signs in SF.

(Note: These signs and their surroundings are changing constantly, so what you see in the photos may not be exactly how they look now.)