Bakery’s Rooftop Sign Relighted After 3 Decades

After some 30 years in darkness, the historic Helms Bakery rooftop sign in Culver City was relighted during a fund-raising gala Sunday night, its red, blue and yellow bulbs once again declaring: “Helms Olympic Bread.”

The sign’s message serves no practical purpose today, as Helms Bakery’s 11-acre factory site has been a mixed-use commercial center since the Helms family shut down the bakery in 1969. Sometime in the early 1970s, the brassy Helms Bakery sign, facing east, was turned off for good.

But relighting the sign now serves a nostalgic principle, said Wally Marks of the family that now manages the bakery buildings. It is an acknowledgement of Los Angeles history, so often under-appreciated, he said. “It was a great old sign, one of the last great rooftop signs,” Marks said hours before the relighting ceremony. “Very authentic -- pure Southern California.”

Helms Bakery provided the “official bread” of the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. The sign relighted Sunday features a large red, white and blue shield with the phrase “Olympic Games Bakers ... Choice of Olympic Champions” lining its edges.

In 1950s Los Angeles, the bakery’s fleet of “coaches” sold bread and milk, their drivers alerting kitchens to their approach by yanking on the trucks’ trademark whistles.

Today, Olympic imagery still adorns the historic site, which is occupied by furniture sellers, architecture and photography studios and antique shops. The Jazz Bakery nightclub also is a tenant.

People close to the building said a sense of history pervades the tan Streamline Moderne structures, and the sign will only increase the nostalgia.

“I grew up in Bakersfield, but we used to visit my grandparents in Culver City. Every time we passed the bakery, my mother would comment on the smells coming out of it,” said Lee Bixler, who is refurbishing a small museum with Helms Bakery memorabilia inside a dusty gallery space there. “It’s nice to see all that coming back.”

The $60,000 restoration work on the sign was begun in April, along with work to install an array of solar energy panels on the main building’s rooftop, Marks said. The Marks family had been contemplating relighting the sign since taking over the bakery a few years after the Helms family closed it.

Marks said he was tired of seeing the sign gradually deteriorate. “We have a great deal of pride. It’s a privilege to own the building,” he said.

The Helms Bakery sign is part of a trend in celebrating the city’s historic signage. A photography exhibit on historic signs is showing at the Museum of Neon in downtown Los Angeles, where other once-forgotten relics have been restored and relighted.

The event Sunday also was a fund-raiser for the Exceptional Children’s Foundation, which provides services for kids with developmental disabilities, and was attended by civic leaders from Culver City and L.A.

Inside the Helms Bakery garage, Bixler and Marks examined one of the few remaining light-yellow Helms Bakery coaches, which was brought out to greet guests. “It’s a real important piece of L.A. history,” Bixler said as Marks gave the driver’s whistle a testing tug.