Why?
It’s an iconic — and intriguing — advertising tagline. MJB Coffee is a San Francisco institution, dating back to 1881 and the same coffee import scene that spawned Folgers Coffee and Hills Bros. Coffee. Twelve of their signs remain in the Bay Area, eleven of which sport the Why? tagline. I've made a new, separate map just showing the locations of the Bay Area's MJB Coffee Co ghost signs. Happy sign hunting and coffee drinking!
I just did a massive update to the San Francisco Bay Area Ghost Sign Map -- including adding 30 odd pins in San Jose! The first in the South Bay! Now bear with me — this is a very, very cursory start to mapping the South Bay but I had to start somewhere. So here we are!
Do you know San Jose history or geography? Can you help me build out the pins in this city? Email me at kasey@kaseysmith.net with any help and/or info you can provide.
Owl Cigar signs are everywhere in San Francisco, even if most aren't visible from street level.
To my current knowledge, there are seven Owl Cigar signs remaining in San Francisco, spread across five buildings, all of which are in the Tenderloin, Lower Nob Hill, and Nob Hill.
921 Post - one visible sign, one mostly hidden sign
124 Turk - hidden sign
128 Jones - hidden sign
725 Geary (facing Hyde) - hidden sign
725 Geary (facing Leavenworth) - hidden sign
698 Bush - hidden sign
So what are Owl Cigars and why are there so many Owl Cigar signs in San Francisco and what do we know about these particular signs?
Cigar company histories are complicated and convoluted. Both the distributors and the brands shift names, fold, and reform, at an IMPRESSIVE rate and not all of this has been well tracked on the internet. Also, it's not my geek speciality so this is me researching outside my field here. That means if I get something wrong, let me know in the comments and I will amend the post.
What we think of as a cigar today— a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be smoked — came into popularity in the early 1800's, challenging the supremacy of the previously dominant tobacco form, the pipe. By the time the gold rush had come and gone in San Francisco, cigar smoking was quite popular and throughout much of that era cigars were mainly made by small, regional manufacturers or tobacco stores who hand rolled their product. In this post-gold rush, pre-earthquake era you would have seen many small regional cigar brands advertised for sale in San Francisco.
Starting in the late 1800’s, you also would have seen the emergence, and dominance, of national cigar brands. For instance, signs for Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer’s General Arthur Cigars are all over the city’s pre-earthquake photographic record - 1, 2, 3, 4, - with at least one sign remaining in Chinatown.
Another early national cigar company was the Straiton & Storm Company. Founded in 1861, it was run by John Straiton and George Storm with offices and factories in New York City and tobacco plantations in Florida. Straiton left the business in 1897 and it was reformed and renamed the Owl Cigar Company in 1890.
How cute is this early trading card of theirs! Note the obsolete spelling of “segars” which went out of vogue not long after the company’s founding.
Owl Cigars were a force to be reckoned with, with 1,500 “rollers” producing 1,500,000 cigars per week for national distribution. Part of the Owl Cigar Company strategy for growing their market share beyond the New York region involved the aggressive use of sign painters to put up “Owl Cigar - Just 5 cents” signs throughout the country. I’ve seen it stated online, but could not confirm a source myself, that their two-person crews were paid $5 to $10 per sign and painted one sign per day - with the total number painted potentially numbering in the thousands. Considering how many still exist, no really, there are a lot, I am inclined to believe this number.
And this is where things get soft in my cigar research. By the 1910’s-1920’s, cigarettes had eclipsed cigars to become the nation’s favored form of tobacco, shaking up the industry in advance of the Great Depression. During this time period, you also start seeing Owl Cigars and White Owl advertised in print side by side, with White Owl being the slightly more expensive cigar option. You also see Owl Cigars raised from five to six cents each around 1918ish.
This pricing did not last long, because by the early 1920’s you see them lowered back to five cents each, automatically (and perhaps purposefully) updating all their old signage in the process.
And then… you just don’t hear anymore from them after around 1921 or 1922.
San Francisco Examiner, November 1921
Some sources state that in order to refresh their branding, Owl Cigars changed their name to White Owl - minus the cigar - in the 1920’s to “clean up” and modernize their image. However, White Owl is a distinct brand formed in Alabama in 1887 so it’s less likely that they updated names, and more likely that they were folded into this existing brand and retired by their distributor. Either way, if you look through newspapers of the time you will see a lot of Owl Cigar print ads up to the late teens, declining through 1921/1922, after which you will see just White Owls. One brand ascendant and one brand declining.
San Francisco Examiner, October 1921
And White Owl still exists! They specialize in cigarillos and you can hear them name dropped in rap songs by Nas and Method Man amongst others.
So what can we learn about San Francisco’s Owl Cigar signs from this information?
Owl Cigar’s national sign campaign started in the 1890’s. The oldest local newspaper reference I could find was from 1897, the oldest local newspaper ad was from 1901, and the oldest local photo was from 1904.
Newspaper clippings are from the San Francisco Examiner. Photo is of 6th and Market in 1904, and comes from OpenSFHistory OpenSFHistory / wnp37.02237.jpg.
From these reference points, we know that Owl Cigars were being actively sold and advertised in San Francisco starting in the late 1890’s, which maps with general information on the brand. So are any of our seven remaining signs from that early era of Owl Cigar advertising?
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Check out the map on Google here.
Without even looking at property records I can tell that none of these signs are older than 1906. Why? From this map, you can see that all known surviving Owl Cigar signs are clustered in the Tenderloin or Lower Nob Hill, an area heavily decimated by the 1906 earthquake and fire. In fact, thanks to a robust photographic record of the earthquake, we can compare the locations of our remaining signs with what the areas looked like immediately after that fateful day. And for fun, let’s contrast those photos with the dates when the buildings were finally rebuilt.
921 Post - Rebuilt 1920
124 Turk - Rebuilt 1907
128 Jones - Rebuilt 1908
725 Geary - Rebuilt 1907
698 Bush - Rebuilt 1907
Notice those early reconstruction dates. Is it even wonder why so many of these Owl Cigar signs are “secret” signs - blocked in by newer construction and no longer visible from street level. A great example of this is 725 Geary. This building with it's double signs once looked upon an empty block, but was slowly encroached upon by new construction. The side facing Hyde was entirely blocked in by its neighbors around 1921. The side facing Leavenworth by 1924.
Construction dates of buildings surrounding 725 Geary
So how old are these signs? With its 1920 construction date, 921 Post just barely squeaked by before the Great Owl Cigar Die-Off/White Owl Rebranding of the 1920’s. I would wager that the 725 Geary signs could be of a similar vintage. They were certainly still partially visible then. Also, there is profound layering on the side that faces towards Hyde, which could mean our Owl cigar sign was a late addition to a well-used palimpsest.
I’d say the signs on the eastern wall of 124 Turk and 128 Jones were likely painted well before the 1920's, potentially even when the buildings first went up in 1907 and 1908. I’d wager this due to a lack of layering (such as I can tell), as well as the fact that their neighbors were constructed in fairly short order. There wouldn't have been a reason to paint these signs in the 1910's-1920's since they would have very constrained visibility. And with 698 Bush we are lucky enough to have not one, but two photos - one from 1909 and another from 1911 - helping us to definitively date the sign's era.
Eastern wall of 124 Turk, sure doesn’t seem to be a lot of layering and overpainting on this particular wall.
So all things considered, I feel we can approximately date these seven Owl Cigar signs like so:
921 Post, both walls - 1920-1922 (construction date - last citations for the brand found online)
124 Turk, eastern wall - 1907-1910 (construction date - date adjacent neighbor was constructed)
128 Jones - 1908-1910 (construction date - date adjacent neighbor was constructed)
725 Geary (Hyde side) - 1907-1921 (construction date - construction of neighbors)*
725 Geary (Leavenworth side) - 1907-1922) (construction date - last citations for the brand found online AND construction of neighbors)
698 Bush - Definitely 1909-1911 but possibly painted as early as 1907.
This might be a first in the history of this mapping project. A wall was cleared of old paint and it REVEALED old signs instead of removing them. Shocking, I know. We’ve seen it before in this 2021 post on Par-T-Pak beverage signs in the Bay Area. This building is known as “the Oriental Block” and sits on Washington Street in Old Oakland. Built in the 1880's by architect John Marquis, it’s been designated Oakland Landmark #LM 82-263. Back in the early fall of 2021, the building’s billboards were removed, revealing a partial Par-T-Pak beverages sign from the 1930’s-1950’s. Given the age of the building, I’ve always known there were considerably older signs under that beige paint. Well, lo and behold, in spring of 2022 that paint was stripped, revealing faint outlines of those very signs.
Read MoreI’ve been doing some research on the OpenSFHistory site, cross referencing their pics with my map to see how many of these signs can be traced through the historic photographic record of the city. Specifically, I’ve been looking at their Vista Views Map which features, as the name suggests, big sweeping photos of the city at large. My goal - to find an image, or images for my book that really show the scope of earthquake devastation and help explain the uneven nature of recovery in the Tenderloin. Basically, a visual origin point that explains in one fell pixelated swoop how we ended up with so many secret signs hidden on the backs and sides of buildings.
And I did!
In an earlier post I discussed the secret ghost signs of San Francisco - those quirks of geography or post earthquake development that are best viewed using Google Earth or similar satellite mapping software. It turns out that much like the ghost sign map in general, my understanding of San Francisco’s secret ghost signs is also evolving because I’ve recently found more of them. Not only did I find a potential Omar Cigarettes sign on 825 Bush, but I’ve found some equally interesting secret signs on 555 Eddy.
Read MoreIn my last post I discussed the secret ghost signs of San Francisco - those quirks of geography or post earthquake development that are best viewed using Google Earth or similar satellite mapping software. It turns out that much like the ghost sign map in general, my understanding of San Francisco’s secret ghost signs is also evolving because I’ve recently found more of them.
This ghost sign on 825 Bush is noteworthy for the clarity of the text - OMAR in oversized lettering can be seen splashed along the backside of the building with additional faint rectangular graphics below it.
But before we get into what this sign might have originally depicted, let’s talk about where and how it was originally designed to be viewed.
Read More
After nine years of identifying, documenting, and researching San Francisco's ghost signs we are expanding the scope of our project to include the East Bay!
Given the scale of the East Bay this is going to be a TOUGH and LONG project so we’re turning to the community to help identify and document where the East Bay's ghost signs are.
Enter the East Bay Community Contribution Day!
Previous contribution days have focused on digital research. This one is focused on safe, socially distanced identification and documentation.
STEP #1 - Pick a neighborhood in an East Bay city. We're most keen to map Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda but DO NOT let that limit you. If you want to pick Richmond or Emeryville or Hayward go for it! Don't worry about coordinating with other people, even if you pick the same neighborhood as someone else you're going to get different signs and different shots of the same sign.
STEP #2 - Take your camera/cell phone and go forth! Walk or drive or take public transportation. Go for as long or as short a time period as you like. Go solo or with your quaranteam or with a socially distanced group of friends.
STEP #3 - Take pictures of any signs you see. We are of course most interested in the hand painted signs but who does't like looking at old neon and retro plastic signs? (note, these are more for funsies and might not make it to the actual map) Just make sure to note the address or intersection so we know how/where to map them.
STEP #4 - Share what you've found. There are a couple different ways to do so:
Share directly on this event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/1165559053845066
Add them to our Flickr group - https://www.flickr.com/groups/14644252@N25/.
Share them on Instagram, make sure to tag @sfghostsigns and include the hashtag #eastbayghostsign
We'll add your signs to the map and credit you on the map point.
Questions? Let us know in the comments
