Sunday, 10 June 2012

When Vancouver's Nights Were Neon



Vancouver's Chinatown - what was...
Vancouver's Chinatown, awash in neon. East Pender Street, just west of Main Street. The buildings still exist, only now minus the neon and the incredible street presence.

Flickr  Postcard, photographer Rolly Ford.

In the early 1950s, Vancouver had over 19,000 neon signs, but in the 1960s, City Council enacted bylaws restricting neon - for decades, you couldn't even have flashing signs. Now, only a handful of signs remain, and mostly static examples.

We had vintage neon on our Top 10 Endangered Sites list in 2010:
http://www.heritagevancouver.org/images_header/header_750x90_04.jpg