Chicago loses a landmark....

[chiburb]

This and other great signage here:
http://condor.depaul.edu/~tseneca/signs/

[madrchsod]

1. thanks for the link

i miss the sign on the ike. when ever i went downtown i knew i was getting getting close when i saw that sign....

[chiburb]

2. Here's the story...

Meanwhile, I'd driven up to approximately where I remembered the sign used to be. I asked a worker shoveling show on the sidewalk in front of a building on Montrose Ave. about the lips sign, and he said, "It's in the parking lot back there."

"Where?" I said.

We both looked up and his jaw dropped. "It's gone!" he said.

The parking lot belongs to Independent Mechanical Industries Inc., and I later spoke to Joe Reynolds, one of the owners.

Reynolds expressed his regret that the sign had come down but said it wasn't his-- it belonged to Scadron Outdoor Advertising, which had been paying his company a modest rent (he wouldn't say how much) for at least eight or nine years.

Wilbur Gage was glad to talk to me when I reached him. He told me the long story of the company and pointed me both to his mother, Minnie, now 91, the original model for the lips, and to Preservation Chicago , the historical landmark group that had spoken with him about the sign.

Preservation Chicago head Jonathan Fine said the Magikist sign was about to make his group's list of seven most endangered Chicago landmarks when it was razed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-zornlog,1,704173.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl

[XNASA]

3. Wha' Happened?

Is it being torn down? (Nevermind, I see your post).

I'm rarely on the Ike these days, isn't that where the Magikist sign is/was, or is it on the Stevenson? I can't think of it without thinking of the Budweiser sign on the Kennedy.

I browsed the website but a couple of notable signs left off are:

"The Baby Factory" sign at Fullerton and I think it's..Racine?

And remember when it seemed as though all of the "Old Style" shingles hanging outside of neighborhood bars were hung upside-down? What's whit dat? I once heard that it was code that meant that the bar paid protection money....

[chiburb]

4. Magikist lips gave Chicago reason to smile

Without so much as a parting kiss, the last pair of the giant lips that once lighted the way into downtown Chicago have left the scene. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, three neon Magikist signs in the shape of lips stood sentry by the expressways near the northern, southern and western entrances to the city.

"For generations of kids who grew up in the suburbs, the Magikist lips were the sign that you'd reached Chicago," said architect Jonathan P. Fine, president of Preservation Chicago, a citizens advocacy group. "You saw those lips lighting up, and your heart began to pitter-patter." The Magikist lips at 85th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway were razed in 1992, and the lips at Cicero Avenue and the Eisenhower Expressway came down with no fanfare at some point several years after that.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0401290098jan29,1,452932.column