For sale: the signs of Times Square
Times Square real estate may be too pricey for the average tourist, but a few hundred bucks could score a piece of the area’s dazzling history.
Artkraft Strauss -- the company that built the famed smoking Camel billboard, six-story Coca-Cola displays and dozens of descending New Year’s Eve balls -- is holding a garage sale as it downsizes in a post-neon age.
The collection includes the hand-drawn design for the Camel billboard, which emitted smoke rings every four seconds from 1941 to 1966; a marquee from the 1962 Broadway production of “The Sound of Music”; and a small neon likeness of comedian Bob Hope.
Artkraft Strauss made most of the huge, sparkling signs -- known as “spectaculars” -- that lighted up Times Square throughout the 20th century.
But since video feeds and computer graphics took hold of the outdoor advertising industry in the 1990s, the company has dwindled from more than 100 people to half a dozen.
Freeman’s, the Philadelphia auction house, will auction a group of drawings, lights and neon signs on Thursday.
“It just seems like a good time,” said company President Tama Starr, whose grandfather and father ran the firm before her. “People are interested in this kind of artifact. It’s representative of an art form that is not much being made anymore.”
Price estimates include $1,500 for the sketch of the smoking Camel sign (which some consider the most famous sign in advertising history), $2,000 for the Bob Hope profile and $15,000 for a model of the Coke display. But a group of 12 “New Year’s Eve Ball” lightbulbs -- the company directed the descent of the famed ball from 1907 to 1996 -- is expected to fetch just a few hundred dollars.
