Shadows of a Forgotten World

I started noticing some strange-looking metal things near some doors in Lviv. I didn’t know what they were until I visited Przemyśl, Poland, last summer, and my friend Sarah told me what they were. Boot scrapers in cities hark back to a time when urban roads were dirt. Thus the bottoms of people’s boots became very muddy and filthy. Solution – place metal boot scrapers near front doors of buildings so people can clean their boots before entering. Boot scrapers have become (for the most part) obsolete as roads have been paved. There are many different kinds of boot scrapers, but in Lviv I’ve only found free-standing boot scrapers, which are usually located just to the side of front doors of buildings. But I have also come across a few that are located right inside the main door to a building. For some reason I really love boot scrapers! This was the first "strange-looking metal thing" I ever noticed. In front of a house Outside the...

Last weekend I was in Krakow, Poland, and found some pretty interesting ghost signs – some restored, some not, some possibly made to look like restored ones. They are pretty similar to ones in Lviv, which is not strange as Krakow and Lviv had pretty similar histories: they were both cities in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria – a crownland of the Austrian Empire – and then both were part of Poland during the interwar period. "Parisian baths" "First regional perfume and cosmetics factory in Lviv is recommended by the sukiennice (Krakow's Renaissance Cloth Hall) in Krakow"   "Russian tea, everyday fresh roasted coffee"         at first i thought these were new signs, but pretty sure they are old i think these are new signs made to look like they are restored (note the missing corners) and this is a modern cafe and American reading room Cafe Mlynek (with new hand-painted signs)

On Saturday I wanted to visit one of my favorite ghost signs, to see how much was left as it has been crumbling. Instead of being sad about how it is slowing disappearing, I was pleasantly surprised to find a man uncovering an epic ghost sign in the same passageway! And, in fact, I think it may be the best ghost sign in Lviv – very colorful and unique! I asked him whether they would be restoring it and he said yes! I watched for about 20 minutes as he chipped away at one side to reveal more. chipping away at the plaster to reveal more of the sign.  also look at ghost sign in top left corner  He saw I was very excited and posed for a picture as he sprayed water (?) on the part he had already uncovered. during restoration Today I went back to check on it. I was expecting to see a lot more uncovered, but it looks like the rest of the sign is unrecoverable. But the part that is uncovered has been restored and looks really nice. after restoration However, th...

I have good luck when it comes to finding ghost signs right when they have been uncovered and right before they will be covered again. Today I went on a bike ride to a part of Lviv I go to only every couple of months, and found that some ghost signs that I had previously seen on a building had been completely uncovered by the workers renovating the building. As always, it was such a wonderful feeling to find them so exposed. But I asked one of the workers whether they plan to paint over them, and he said yes :( Well, I am grateful I got to see them in all of their glory. Any day now they will be painted over… I wonder in how many years they will be uncovered again…. As for the history of the signs, I know that in 1934 a woman received permission to open a pharmacy in this building. (At that time there were still very few women who ran pharmacies.) The signs on the façade list items like perfume, soap, varnish, paint, string, water, so I’m wondering whether these items were sold...

I’ve searched old photos of Lviv for photos with hand-painted signs, in particular for ones that are still visible today. I’ve only found one – an old photo of the milk house, which I posted about earlier.  Here are a few other ones with signs that disappeared long ago. Shevchenko Boulevard building with advertisement on right is long gone bottom left corner signs with stripes Photos taken from the following websites: www.karta.org.pl , www.old.lviv.ua , http://www.lvivcenter.org/ , http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/

One of my favorite cafes in Lviv is called Sztuka . A café of the same name was founded in 1909, but the new one was opened in a different location – in a former store. They restored the old hand-painted signs on the façade and the frescoes on the ceilings inside. They also have some old street signs hanging up inside. It has a really nice atmosphere, good coffee and sweets, and it’s on a quiet street a bit outside the old city center, so it’s not very touristy. Anyhow, it has some great examples of prewar hand-painted signs. Images of before and after restoration on cafe's website . This is a new picture of the cafe made to look like an old photo.  But I did find an old photo of the old café.  Also, a documentary film about Lviv during the first Soviet occupation of Galicia in 1939 uses the signs in some of its scenes, as seen in the trailer:   And these are two recent shots of the façade

It makes me very happy when new stores, bars, and restaurants use the old method of advertising what products they have for sale, that is, painting the name of their establishment and their products directly on the store’s facade. There are several examples of such places in Lviv. They are so much more aesthetically pleasing than stores which use big, bulky, plastic or neon signs. This store, which in fact kept the old signs that were found during renovation, added one sign in Ukrainian, which says “Продукти” and has the store’s hours. At first I thought the Ukrainian sign was old and was really excited to find more old signs in Ukrainian, but the more I thought about I realized it is very unlikely that was old, especially as it has the hours of the store. In fact, I think it is possible that that section which has the word “products” listed in different languages may be all new. The rest of the pictures are of new stores, restaurants, and bars that continued ...