Plenty of fine neon to jazz up the night. Most city streets looked like this, of course, but it wasn’t just changing tastes that eliminated the thicket of signs. Some cities outlawed signs that overhung the street – perhaps one or two fell off and beaned some schmuck, leading to Editorials and a General Outcry, perhaps because urban-renewal scolds found these jostling advertisements a messy, disordered blot. Whichever the case was, the signs came down, and our streets are duller for it.

Blue Bird Cafe; Metropole hotel; modernized bank facade.