While searching for a news article from the Fresno Bee, I stumbled upon an amazing resource. It was a webpage called Super Signage Fresno, CA. I’ve had a little obsession about signage for the past couple of months.

Unfortunately, THE FRESNAN stole my thunder and posted this early today. He pulled it from my twitter feed when I discovered the site yesterday. Mike has become an archop groupie giving the site his Bloggiest Moment of the Week for two weeks in a row. With lots of link love, I’ll let this one pass. But Mike, remember, the built environment is the realm of archop, stray too far and we will school you.

Now that that little blog warfare is out of the way… Digging deeper into the site called www.agilitynut.com, we see that Deborah Jane has collected an amazing inventory of Roadside Architecture from across the country. You can search type and even browse signage by place. There are even a sampling some of my favorite architectural styles including Art Deco and Mid-Century. I have not read much about the author yet. So, I’m wondering what is her method is for collecting all of this data. But one thing is sure, we’ll continue to use it at a resource.

In the sampling of Art Deco architecture. I saw this building. While slurping some Pho you may have noticed this architectural gem called the Ivory Tower. “The Ivory Tower stands in the parking lot of the Mayfair Shopping Center. The shopping center was built in 1945 and has since been remodeled. This remaining structure was used as the Administration Building and might also have contained a clothes shop.”

Take some time exploring the site. I’m sure it not comprehensive, so what are your favorites? What was missed?

I’m amazing in how much articulation there used to be in signage. It was part of the architecture not just the lighted boxed with replaceable copy that is so prevalent today. How do we get back to that? Where are the missed opportunities?