ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com 48
July/August 2021
not tell the difference. A quarter of a century ago, in one of countless stories written about the sign over the decades, a reporter asked Mickey Seither—then chief engineer of the Baltimore plant—what might become of it in the future. Seither replied: "We have no intention of doing anything with this sign except keeping it lit.”
PHOTO: BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF INDUSTRY
“We have no intention of doing anything with this sign except keeping it lit.”
“This is happening throughout the lighting industry everywhere,” said Robert M. Kaye, a longtime employee of the Triangle Sign Company in Halethorpe and now a consultant there. Triangle installed the original Domino sign once it had been fabricated by the Artkraft Strauss company of Manhattan. One of the last prominent neon signs produced by Triangle was the winking, 38-foot wide “Mr. Boh” sign above the former National Brewery in Canton. Since then, said Kaye, LED technology has improved, and with it, energy efficiency. “Neon tubing requires skilled craftspeople; LED does not,” said Kaye, comparing the demise to the fate of hot lead in printing. “Neon is dying.” In its wake, the Gable company of Curtis Bay—which illuminated the old Montgomery Ward building on the edge of Carroll Park when it was reconstituted as Montgomery Park— was hired to build a 21st-century replica that will reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions. “The new sign is aluminum rather than steel and will be more sustainable,” said Peter C. O’Malley, vice president of corporate relations with ASR. “It will last at least another 70 years.” Gable’s challenge in duplicating the sign “to the letter” included getting the right shade of yellow paint to back the letters and measuring the amount of space between the tubes. Each letter was scanned and studied to the minutest detail. It was “very laborious,” said O’Malley, “to take out a broken tube and replicate its shape. Many of the replacement tubes didn’t really follow the lighting pattern intended by the original design.” Baker said that people who gazed at test panels for the new sign could
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et’s return, one last time, to the doubters; those who are certain that when the new sign debuts they’ll be able to navigate the tricks that memory plays. “The average person won’t be able to tell the difference because [orangishred] is easy for LED to duplicate,” said Kaye, noting that many neon signs of the past, including the 2 O’Clock Club and its kin on the Block, had no distinctive color at all, just white. “There are shades of blue and ruby red that you can only get by putting neon gas in a glass tube, but the Domino sign will look the same.” So, sugar babies, what does become of the broken hearted? The large 34-foot tall “D” will be
