Secret Owl Cigar Signs of San Francisco / by Kasey Smith

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.

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?

History of Owl Cigars, as far as I can tell…

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.

Owl Cigars and San Francisco

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.

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.