Green Porcelain Budweiser Neon Sign | ||
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Posted 14 years ago
MickeyH
(3 items)
I bought the green porcelain sign off the wall of an Antique Shop in Diamond Springs, Ca and had the Neon Tubes rebuilt and it sits on my mantle. Lights up the room very well.
How many Green Porcelain Budweiser signs have you seen. I'm thinking it must be from the 1920s. The maker of the sign is General Outdoor Adv.Co. I don't know where that company was located or when it went out of business.
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this is really cool ive never seen a beer sign this old
thanks oilman
I get that a lot. I'm hoping someone out there can tell me about the company that made it or when this would have been made. All I can do is guess about it's age. I even like the big rock chips in the porcelain.
its defiantly really old and im assuming pretty rare. ill try to find out some more info for you
i believe this was made by the general outdoor company out of ontario california they started in 1954 and still in business. they specialize in billboards now but i think this might be one of the early pieces. you can contact them and see by calling 909-983-4414 they also got a web site general outdoor.com hope this helps
Thanks vanskyock24, I sent an email with pictures to that company. Hopefully I'll get some history to go with my sign.
Well, I received an email from General Outdoor sign company and they have never seen or heard of a green porcelain Bud sign of any shape or form. They took over the company around 1970. He said that the company had been around since the turn of the century but they don't have much history concerning the early days . He agreed with me that it is most likely from the 20s or even earlier. "Back to the drawing board".
did he say if they made porcelian signs- i wonder if it was a special made piece for a bar. i seen a green one in albany indiana but not as old but would say specially made for them because they are called green duck inn. hmmm got me curious now
He said they don't do porcelain. Didn't know for sure about the past but said they ,more than likely, did pre 1950s.
One way of dating an Anheuser Busch sign is by the logo. A logo with stars on the shield is before 1939, with strips is after 1939. Remember, prohibition was from 1919 to 1933. Since not many neon signs were in existence in 1919, the sign most probably dates between 1933 and 1939.
Definitely a 1930's sign, as indicated above by rwisswell. General Outdoor Advertising was created in 1927-28 through the merger of the giant Thomas Cusack Company with several regional outdoor display firms. This new entity dominated outdoor advertising in the US through the mid-1960's with a network of billboards, painted walls, and giant neon spectaculars popular with national advertisers.
The predecessor firm of Thos. Cusack Co. had been a pioneer in smaller overhead neons, and General Outdoor continued to produce these displays and mark them with the GOAC imprint through the early 1930's, when it apparently abandoned that market. This makes me think your sign date can be narrowed to the years 1933-36.
FWIW, this is the first green, all-caps Budweiser overhead neon I have seen since 1966, when there still was a beauty attached to a "horseshoe" neon hanging above the entrance to a tavern on Milwaukee Avenue in Niles, Illinois. (Extra points go to anyone who remembers the name of this establishment. I don't, but the owner's name on the horseshoe was "Art ????").
Bud neons with the red porcelain skins were fairly common in the Chicago area through the mid-1950's, and in St. Louis even into the early-1970's before injection-molded plastic skins became common. I lived and worked in each of those cities for many years, but the green sign in Niles is the only one of its type that I remember seeing anywhere until I noticed your photo on-line, so thanks for posting.