The Aristocratic sign glows again in neon exhibit Vancouver’s The Post

The giant neon sign for the Aristocratic restaurant was a landmark for generations of Vancouverites.

Adorning the corner of Broadway and Granville streets from 1960 to 1997, it was a beloved relic from Vancouver’s neon age, when the city boasted 19,000 neon signs. It featured a vibrant mix of red-and-blue neon, had four different typestyles and a plastic bit with an illustration of Risty, a dapper man with a top hat and monocle that served as the restaurant’s mascot.

Alas, the lot was sold, the restaurant was demolished, and Chapter’s bookstore was built on the site. Chapter’s made a replica Aristocratic sign for inside its store, but it was much smaller.

The Museum of Vancouver had saved the original Aristocratic sign, but it was literally too big (three-metre high, 3.3-metre long and 0.3-metre deep) to get through its doors. So aside from a brief period when it was hung outside the museum, it’s been in storage.

Until now.

Last week, Risty came back to life in a neon display at The Post, the office building in the former downtown post office. The museum has lent five signs from its large neon collection to a new installation at The Post called Lit! Neons of Vancouver.

Installed across from Deville Coffee at the 366 Dunsmuir St. entrance of The Post, the signs are aligned along a wall that faces the street. Visitors can check them out when The Post building is open during the day, but they can still be seen from the street when the building is closed at night.

Besides the Aristocratic sign, the exhibition also includes a big ‘R’ from the former Ridge Theatre at Arbutus Street and West 16th Avenue, a red-and-green “Palm Ice Cream” sign from the former Palm dairy brand, the red neon sign for the American Hotel on Main Street, and a stylish white neon sign for The Cookie Jar, a 1950s chain.

There is also a 2001 replica of the Welding Shop and Engineering sign, which stood at 1600 Main St. from 1930 to 1974. The only animated sign on display, it shows a welder in a welding mask working with a red welding torch and a green welding rod, which creates blue neon sparks that flash off-and-on.

Neon expert John Atkin said the exhibition gives people a chance to experience the full glory of neon light, up close.

“The signs are down at your level, not high up,” he says. “And the quality of light, the overflow … (the signs are) doing what they should do on the street, (have) overlapping layers of colour and things. It works really, really well.”

The complex where the Ridge Theatre used to be features a replica of the old Ridge sign. But the original big ‘R’ in the Lit! display has been in storage with the Aristocratic sign in Building 14, a warehouse where the Museum of Vancouver keeps really big items.

The painted metal that forms the big ‘R’ is looking a bit weathered, which is what happens when signs sit outside for decades. But museums want the patina of age, not something that’s fixed up.