A Canadian Family

Neon Signs / Modern Times

For the July 2009 issue of A Festival of Postcards - SIGNS – I’ve decided to share something relatively modern from my collection “Postcards of St. Catherine St. in Montreal”.

I specialize in early twentieth century b/w vintage postcards, but since Montreal has been my family’s hometown for the last fifty years, I do sometimes collect more modern postcards. Today I’m showing a Colourpicture Publishers plastichrome postcard and instead of sharing an anecdote from my family history, I’m going to show you some of the clues I used to date the card.

Dating the postcard

One thing I appreciate about signs on a postcard is that they provide invaluable clues to the age of the postcard – or at least the age of the image on which the postcard was based. The clues are in the materials used (e.g.wood, metal, plastic) as well as the style and the actual symbols or text on the signs

Movie Marquee at the Palace

I always like to see a marquee on a postcard because it gives me the first bracket for the date range. In this case, the Palace was showing the  movie Lydia Bailey starring Anne Francis, and that tells me that the postcard doesn’t predate 1952.

Lydia Bailey was based on the book by the same name which was authored by Kenneth Roberts. You can find out more about this from Danny McDonald blog (Kennethlroberts) in his post  A Blast from the Past: NY Times Review of “Lydia Bailey” the Movie.

Advertising Sign – … be sure!

Moving further along to the back of the postcard, You can see the large, yellow, underlined W and the words “…be sure it’s” and the partial word “nghouse”. My first idea was that this was a steak restaurant by the name of Longhouse, but after a little detective work I discovered that this was actually the Westinghouse logo, and a part of their famous slogan You can be sure if  it’s Westinghouse. The W logo  was in use at least from the 1940s as we can see in this  vintage 1940 advertisement at the Duke University Digital Collections.

Movie Theatres on St-Catherine Street

Nowadays, Montreal’s St-Catherine Street is still full of movie theatres but they’re mostly multiplexes, so another way to date this postcard is look at the dates when the cinemas featured on this card were in operation. Since we can see the  Capitol in the postcard, we know it has to predate 1973.  If you’re interested in vintage Montreal movie theatres you’ll find more information at Rivest’s Ultimate List of Movie Theatres and Drive-Ins and Cinema Treasures.

Cinema de Paris

1945 – 1997

Palace

1921 – 2000

Capitol

1921 – 1973

Loews

1917 – 1999

Cosy Restaurant and the Top Hat Cafe

The Cosy Restaurant was easy to date using the historic Lovell’s Street Directories.

From Lovell’s I found out that Cosy Restaurant already existed in 1952. It was located at 710 St-Catherine St. near the Palace Movie Theatre and the owners were a Mr. Louis Laglos and son. The last trace of the restaurant in Lovell’s is in the 1970 directory and by that time the owner was a Mr. Spiro Gavares.

The Top Hat Cafe was also listed in Lovell’s. If you look closely at the enlarged detail to the right – at the top of  the sign you’ll see a beautiful example of neon art consisting of a top hat and baton. You can also make out the words “Top Hat Cafe”. These words are repeated on the sign below but with the addition of “Floor Show”.

The Top Hat Cafe was already listed in Lovell’s before 1952. It was located at 720 St.Catherines St. and it was owned by an A. Foster. In 1956 The top Hatwas still listed in the business directory but there was no trace of it in the 1957 or ’58 directories.

Cars on St-Catherine St. – 1950s (?)

Date Clues on the Back of the Postcard

Transcript:

Publishers, Benjamin News Company, 425 Guy St., Montreal

St. Catherine St. At Night – La Rue Ste-Catherine Le Soir, Montreal, Que. Canada

P1o711 Plastichrome by

COLOURPICTURE PUBLISHERS, INC, Boston 15, Mass., I.S.A. M10

According to the website  Rubylane, this Boston  address for Coulourpicture Publishers

dates this card to the 50s or early 60s.

Conclusion

The image on the postcard had to have been taken between 1952 to 1957 – and the postcard could not have been published anytime later than the early sixties.

Related Posts:

Index: Vintage Postcards of Quebec

A FESTIVAL OF POSTCARDS – Headquarters

July 25, 2009 - Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | A Festival of Postcards, advertising signs, Montreal, movie theaters, neon, neon signs, signs, vintage advertising, vintage sign