I’ve come across three old hitching posts in two northern suburbs of Chicago, including in the village of Winnetka. I assume they have been in the same locations near the curbs since the time horses were still used as modes of transport here. I also assume there used to be […]

Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, has a few guard stones that used to protect the sides and corners of walls from carriages.

In downtown Winnetka, I found a well-preserved coal chute. The building and chute date to the early twentieth century, probably between 1900 and 1930. The Majestic Company was founded in 1907 in Huntington, Indiana. It manufactured coal chutes, garbage receivers, package receivers, and fireplace dampers. Here is is an original […]

I saw this antique brass three-unit mailbox with old-fashioned speaking tubes and doorbells in an apartment building that was built in 1904 in the Ukrainian Village in Chicago. I’m guessing it was installed either when the building was built or no later than the 1920s. Currently there is a modern […]

Chicago has its share of ghost signs. Here a few from a couple neighborhoods on the north side of the city. The first one is an old ad for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, which was based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Schlitz brewery was opened in 1858 and in 1902 […]

Baraboo, Wisconsin, was the headquarters and winter home of the famous Ringling Brothers circus. The Ringling Brothers held their first circus in 1884. In 1919 they merged with the Barnum & Bailey Circus and moved their winter headquarters to Connecticut. The old grounds and buildings are now a living museum […]

I took a day trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and found some pretty cool ghost signs in the Third Ward, a historic warehouse district.

Last spring a few of my friends found this fake multilayered ghost sign in Boulder, Colorado. It’s on the side of a bike shop. There seem to be three layers of signs, and even the bricks are fake – they are painted on. (Thank you Julie, Eric, and Andrew for […]

My sister recently visited a ghost town in Montana called Bannack. The town was founded in 1862 and was the site of a major gold discovery. Today sixty historic structures remain standing in the town. The last residents left in the 1970s. A ghost sign remains on the ghost hotel. […]

In Tallinn, I found an old metal roller shutter with a Russian inscription. Estonia was part of the Russian Empire until 1917 and so the shutter dates to before the Russian Revolution. From an issue of the newspaper Сибирскій листокъ, dated April 10, 1905, there is an advertisement for Штори […]