Ghost Signs of Spokane, Part Two

EWU grad students Anna Harbine and Frank Oesterheld leading
a tour of the ghost signs of Spokane

Some time back I posted about a unique class project that I was forcing my unwilling students to do using to enrich my class on Local History Research Methods--the Ghost Sign Project. I thought I should bring the subject up-to-date.

Ghost signs are those faded, painted advertisements that you see on the sides of buildings in the historic areas of many American cities. Painted in thick layers of lead paint, many have long outlived the products and businesses they were created to advertise. In the spring of 2013, my students fanned out across Spokane and did an inventory of the surviving ghost signs.  I thought it would be fun to have my students map and record as many of the signs as they could find, then research the background of these vanished businesses.

The assignment worked better than I dared imagine. The students loved prowling the alleyways (always in pairs!) and finding the old signs. They became quite competitive, trying to see who could find the most. They took with them clipboard, cameras, and a form that we developed together to record their data. You can see the form here.

An online version of the form, created by my student Frank Oesterheld, automagically dropped their information into a Google Fusion Table. This generated a map of the ghost signs of Spokane:

Pretty cool, yes? We found signs for blacksmiths and buggy manufacturers, for early car dealerships and Single Room Occupancy hotels, for cigars and chewing tobacco, for paints and coffee and flour. All in all the signs, most created between 1890 and 1920, painted a picture of a workingman's town where people wanted an inexpensive place to stay and a cheap cigar.

Then we took to the archives to research the histories of the signs. City directories and Sanborn maps were the most valuable sources, but we also dug through Google News Archives, historic register nominations, census records, marriage and other vital records, and oral histories. I told my students to look for interesting stories behind the signs--stories of the business, stories of the owners, stories about the kind of town that Spokane was during the era in which their sign was painted. They found some great stuff, including Japanese hotel owners, the era of cheap downtown lodging, life in the rail yards, and Spokane's "cracker war." The stories were written from our local history smartphone app and website, Spokane Historical. The best of them appear there as a walking tour, Ghost Signs of Spokane.

It was a tremendously successful class exercise. And yet when class was over some of us felt like the topic was not exhausted. How else could this research be presented?

This spring two of my graduate students, Anna Harbine and Frank Oesterheld, developed a face-to-face walking tour of the signs that they would lead. Adapting the digital to the analog proved an interesting challenge. Which signs do we include? How far do we want to walk? Should the tour be one-way or a loop? Oesterheld and Harbine chose a route, developed scripts, and practiced the walk a half-dozen times. Last Friday they went live, leading a group from the Northwest Archivists Conference through the back alleys of Spokane in search of ghosts. It was a hit! Here are some pictures of the event, taken by Benjamin Helle of the Washington State Archives ~ Olympia Regional Branch. Here we are getting started:

Don't despair if you missed the tour, we are looking at ways to make it happen again, perhaps as part of a First Friday event.

As a teaching exercise in public history, I am delighted how this project has evolved. The class itself was part research seminar and part treasure hunt, both educational and engaging. They course laid the building blocks of a digital tour, and then a physical tour, also spearheaded by public history students. Four of the students in the course also presented their work as a poster session at the National Council for Public History conference this spring. The project built a lot of bridges with the local historic preservation community and most importantly brought attention to some of my students and their work.

I teach Research Methods in Local History again in the coming school year--what should we do as a group research project next time around?

Spokane Ghost Signs Update



Surely not *that* Henry George?

Today ended the second week of History 407: Research Methods in Local History. What a great day we had! The course met at the old Schade Brewery building in the West Central neighborhood, near Riverpoint campus. We explored the lobby and the historic photograhs there, then headed over to the Jensen Byrd. Students worked in teams of two, one with a clipboard and the other with a camera to record the signs the we found. Then the teams fanned out and explored the neighborhood.

Afterwards we had some beers at Ugly Betties and talked about what we had found and how to improve our data collection. Some of the observations:

• An amazing number of legible signs still exist, and they are cool as hell
• There are also many traces of signs that are no longer readable--we will look for historic photos to try and figure out what they said
• Photographing the signs is tricky, some are up high and at angles where they are not visible directly below, other are obscured by power lines and the like
• Signs for hotels and tobacco produces predominated with about five of each
• Working in teams is definitely the right way to proceed, not only so one can take pictures and the other notes but also to help one another deciper faded lettering
• We cannot wait to get into the archives and begine researching the stories behind the signs, which we will find in city directories, property record cards, register nominations, and more

Below is a slideshow of some pictures I took. The first half are from a few weeks ago when I was scouting for this class, today's photographs begin with the Schade brewery.

 

The Spokane Ghost Sign Project, an Experiment in Public History Pedagogy

[Update: Bonus Research Tip about using Google Street View added 3/9/2012, see the bottom of the post!]

[The following are assignment instructions for some of my Public History students. As I was typing them up I though--"Hey, this might make a good blog post."]

The Spokane Ghost Sign Project is an experiment in crowd sourcing a community history project with a few simple, free digital tools. The project goal is to create a interactive visual record of Spokane's ghost signs and their history. The educational goal is to introduce public history students to some basic digital and research tools, including Flickr, Google News Archive, city directories, Sanborn maps, and archival research.

Advertisement from 1907 Spokane city directory.

A ghost sign is a sign, usually hand-painted on the side of a brick building, for a business that is no longer around. (For the purposes of this assignment any sign for a closed business counts as a ghost sign.) These signs can persist for decades after a business has vanished and are often the only visible record of the institution. This Flickr pool provides some examples, including quite a few in Spokane. Ghost signs are major uninterpreted historical objects in our public spaces--and we can't have that! So let's interpret some.

The assignment is straightforward enough: Find some ghost signs, take pictures, research the history of the business advertised in the sign, and put the results up on our own Flickr pool. This is the first time I have given this assignment but I think it will be fun and will sharpen your public and digital history skills.

Historian want a cracker? See the Sanborn map image below.

Step 1: Find and photograph some ghost signs. When hunting for ghost signs look for old brick buildings--the older and more run down the better. In Spokane the old warehouses along the railroad tracks retain a lot of ghost signs. You might also explore the edges of downtown where the buildings are less likely to have been restored and repainted. Also try the near Spokane Valley and north of the river.

Bring 1) a decent camera with a zoom, 2) a notebook and pencil, 3) a map of Spokane on which you can take notes (print off a few pages of Google Maps?) and a 4) pocketful or quarters. Your cell phone camera is probably not up to the task buy any $100 point-and-shoot with at least a 3X zoom should do the trick. Take your time and try to get a good clear shot. Experiment with photographing from different angles for a more interesting shot.

Do not trespass to get your photograph, stay on the sidewalks, and do not get run over by a car. The latter will result in an automatic F. 

Step 2: Research the history of your businesses. Your goal is to write a couple of paragraphs, not a research paper, but you need to get the information right. Think of the 5 Ws--who what when where and why? There are many resources for researching local history, here are a few of the best for this assignment:

Sanborn map detail for Washington Cracker Co.

• City directories for Spokane go back to the late 1880s and up to the present. The bulk of the directories are devoted to listing the name, address and occupation of every person in the city, but they also include business listings in the back, along with advertisements. Take a guess at when the business might have existed and start with a directory from that year. The directories are a little confusing at first but you will soon get the hang of how they are organized. You will find nearly-complete runs of Spokane directories at the Eastern Region Branch of the State Archives in Cheney, at the Northwest Room of Spokane Public Library, and in the Joel E. Ferris Research Library at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. The directories can tell you what years the business existed, other places it might have been located, sometimes the business owners and where they lived, and what goods and services the business might have dealt in. Bring your camera because you might find an interesting illustration or advertisement.
• While you are looking at city directories take a few minutes to examine some Sanborn maps for your block. These are incredibly detailed block-by-block maps that were made of American cities, beginning in the late 1800s, to help insurance companies estimate fire insurance liabilities. Look at the example of the Washington Cracker Company building on this page--it is a wealth of information. Collections of Sanborn Maps fro Spokane are available at the Northwest Room and at the Joel E. Ferris Research Library int he MAC.
• If your building is on the Spokane Register of Historic Places you are in luck. The Spokane Historic Preservation Office has some valuable online resources, include a list of all designated properties in Spokane. Watch for the words Nomination (PDF) at the bottom of the property description because for some properties you download the historic register nomination form, which will have all the information you will need.
• Old newspapers may have information about your business. We are very fortunate in Spokane because the Google News Archive has scanned most of the historic newspapers for our town and put them online. Searching it is a bit tricky--try using complete phrases, limiting the years of your search, and entering "Spokesman" in the source box or "Spokane" in the place box. Take your time and learn how to use this resource. If you find a striking headline or advertisement for your business, do a screen capture and save the image.
• Good old archival research is productive and fun. The Northwest room of the Spokane Public library has many old street view photographs, clippings files, and other possible sources of information, as does the Joel E. Ferris Library at the MAC. Hint: People who are nice and polite to the archivists often discover more information.
• Finally, there is THE GOOGLE. There is tremendous interest in local history out there, and often a Google search with the name of a company plus Spokane will turn up a newspaper article, a webpage, an old postcard, or other historical gem.

Step 3: Edit your pictures for maximum impact. I like the free Google product Picasa for simple photo editing, but you can use whatever you prefer.

Directories often include valuable illustrations such
as this. Click here to see the present street view.

Step 4: Load your picture(s) and your short history of the company to our Flickr pool, Ghost Signs of Spokane. You will have to establish a free Flickr account and then ask to join the group. I will approve your membership and you can upload your photos and descriptions. Note: When you load your photographs to Flickr I strongly encourage you to use some form of Creative Commons licensing. Ta da! You have documented community history.

Bonus Research Tip: (added 3/9/2012) It just occurs to me the Google Street View is a very useful tool for this project. With GSV you can "drive" down nearly any street in Spokane and scout ahead for ghost signs, or at least for neighborhoods of old brick buildings that are likely places for the signs. You could also use GSV after you find a sign if you misplaced the address. Here is one ghost sign viewable on GSV downtown (it is for the Grand Coulee Hotel and is far more readable in person than it appears here), and here is a little one on the side of a building in the East Central neighborhood.

Friends and students, this is my first time through with this assignment, so be sure to report any difficulties or make suggestions in the comments section.