Where Would You Find This Ghost Sign, Let's play Attention to Detail!

Let's play Attention to Detail! We give you a close-up clue and you have to figure out where you've seen it around Boston.

Here are some hints:

• It is on a main street in Boston's South End.
• The words are still significant.
• It is in the South End Landmark District established in 1983. Today it would seem to fall under the guideline that, "Advertising or general information signs are not allowed."

Ready? Click through or scroll down past this great book about Boston for the answer.

 

 

• The faded advertisement in the last clue was painted on the side of 109 Dartmouth Street.
• Ghost signs are old, faded advertising images, like this one, painted on exterior building walls.
• Atlas Obscura explains the name given to the sign painters who did this type of work, “The workers were called walldogs for two reasons: first because they worked like dogs (you try painting a 30-foot brick wall in the blazing heat or wind and cold); plus, sliding up and down the side of a building meant they needed to be tethered–leashed, so to speak–to the wall.”
• There are many wonderful websites about ghost signs.
• We try to document these fading images by taking new photos of them each time we see one.

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Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Adapted for BostonZest from one of our Attention to Detail Newspaper columns.