Montrealers looking for a good sign, look no further. Concordia University has amassed quite the collection of vintage beacons.
The school’s Communications and Journalism building, located at the Loyola campus, has been amassing the collection for 10 years. It started with the sign for the old Warshaw Supermarket on St. Laurent and has only grown since then.
“The signs that we collect are the ones that really, no one else is interested in,” said Associate Professor of Communications Matt Soar, who co-founded the Montreal Signs Project. “They’ve been taken down or abandoned. A business has closed down and we’re really just there to catch them if they fall.”
The latest addition to the collection used to hang above the Silver Dragon Chinese Restaurant, a one-time Ville Emard landmark. Soar said his team saved the almost 60-year-old sign it before the sign ended up in a landfill.
“As you’ll see it, it’s in terrible condition,” he said. “A lot of the neon is damaged, broken or missing, there are dead pigeons and birds nest and all kinds of nasties inside, a lot of the paint is peeling.”
The project preserves some of Montreal’s least-heralded art, but each piece raises questions about the city’s history.
“Who built the sign?” asked Soar. “Who were the artisans (who designed it?)”
A public exhibition of the collection will run for the next two weeks. For more information, click here.
