Main St near the Susan B. Anthony District is where you'll find the wonderfully named S.A. Doody's Reliable Shoe Store.
The full text appears to be:
S.A. DOODY'S
RELIABLE
SHOE STORE
BOOTS, SHOES
RUBBERS
and then the rest is obscured -- one of the words may be "hiring."
This painted sign from Lyons, NY is typical of what happens when there is limited advertising space in a small village. Note the Coca Cola logo bleeding through behind the Honest Scrap sign. The second view of the two signs makes for some great comedy : "Honest Scrap: delicious, honest, refreshing, scrap." Something tells me that wasn't the intended message.
Picture and text by Pat Domaratz
Pat Domaratz pointed me to this Geneva, NY, landmark. A quick search turned up this lovely little site on RootsWeb, which tells us:
"In 1847, John Williams Smith and S. S. Cobb opened a dry goods store
in Geneva NY under the name of Cobb & Smith. In 1849, Mr. Cobb
withdrew from the business and John Smith was joined with his brother,
Solomon E. Smith, in the operation of J. W. Smith & Co. This
store continued in operation til the mid-1900's." The site has a nice illustration of the store, too. 
Among the store's employees was Samuel D. Pierson of Pittsford, whose biography is available online. If you're willing to drive a bit to do your research, Hobart & William Smith College in Geneva has a five-page history of the store among the papers of George Maxwell Blackstock Hawley, who graduated from Hobart in 1892.
This sign for Phillips Process Co Inc is located in the High Falls District in Rochester, on the corner of Mill St. and Commercial St. Among other things, this building houses Entercom's Rochester broadcast studios. The sign is fairly easy to read:
PHILLIPS
PROCESS CO
Inc
MANUFACTURERS OF
NEV-R-KURL
TYPEWRITER RIBBONS
CLEAR PRINT
STAMP PADS
SPECIALTY INKS
EX-IT WATERLESS
HAND CLEANSER
Phillips Process Company still exists, but it's now on Magnolia St. in Rochester. At one time, though, it was at 192 Mill St., where these photos were taken. It's funny where you find documentation for things like that. In this case, I found the company's address listed on a very thrilling 1959 report titled: "PUBLICATIONS--Typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, pencils, and inks for use in typing and reviewing manuscripts" from the U.S. Department of the Interior. If you've been having trouble sleeping, read this report.
Here's another multi-layered ad, this time from a building in Canandaigua, NY. The building is on the corner of Buffalo St. and Main St. You can easily see the Gold Medal Flour advertisement. I was baffled by the clearly visible word "Eventually" at the top of the Gold Medal ad. What could that mean? Try all the other flours, and then get around to Gold Medal? A little detective work turned up the explanation. The word was part of one of Gold Medal's most successful ad campaigns . According to the General Mills Web site:
"In 1907, Washburn, Crosby launched its long-running advertising slogan, 'Eventually-Why Not Now?' B.S. Bull, the company's advertising manager, is credited with the creation of the slogan. As the story goes, he was editing a wordy text about the superior quality of Gold Medal Flour and found, that when he was finished he had edited out all the words except 4: 'Eventually.' He then added, 'Why Not Now?' Having had this brilliant idea, he was struck with self-doubt and tossed the paper into the wastebasket. It was said to have been found by a young member of the firm, James Ford Bell, who later became the first president of General Mills, Inc. (The slogan was used on billboards, company trucks, train cars, flour bags and in the company's printed advertisements, appearing as late as the early 1950's. Other companies adopted the slogan as their own; it was seen in political cartoons; the slogan was the title for a Sunday sermon; and it even appeared as the front-page headline of the Cincinnati Times-Star with a small-print notation, 'With apologies to Gold Medal Flour.")" (If you get out the old magnifying class, you can see the words WASHBURN, CROSBY'S above the word GOLD.)
If you look closely at the sign, you'll see that another sign was painted on the same section of wall. Upon close inspection, that sign reads:
JUICE CANDIES
AND FRUIT
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
CASH PAID FOR
BUTTER AND EGGS
As our English friends would say: What's all this then?
I have the answer. I happened to take two photos of the front of the building, too. The first is a mundane shot, but the second solves the puzzle. The small inlaid stone at the top of the building reads:
W.S. McK
1886
A little digging turned up this obituary from the Ontario County Times of Wednesday, 6 August 1924:
"William S. McKechnie, a life long resident of Canandaigua and for many years a prominent merchant at the Four Corners in upper Main Street, died at his home Wednesday morning about 9 o'clock, following a long illness. Mr. McKechnie, who was a nephew of the late J. and A. McKechnie, the well known brewers, was born in Canandaigua in 1847, and was educated at the Academy here. After a course in a commercial college in Rochester, he engaged in the business in Main Street North, first as an employee in the J. and A. McKechnie grocery store at the Corners, then as a partner in the same store with William McCabe, then with John Browning, and finally on his own account. In 1886 he built the brick block in which he thereafter for eight years conducted the store, following which he sold out to the present proprietors, O. C. Frary and Son, and retired from active business. Mr. McKechnie was a member of Canandaigua Lodge, F and A. M. and Excelsior chapter, R A M, and had held high offices in these organizations. He leaves only his wife and a number of cousins. Funeral services were held from the home Friday, Rev. H. L. Gaylord of St. John's church officiating. Interment was in Woodlawn Cemetery."
So there you have it. Apparently, the store paid cash to farmers who brought in needed goods. I went to high school in Canandaigua, and I've probably passed that corner a thousand times. Now I know a little bit more about it.
Knopf Clothes was a Rochester-based clothing maker that was in business from 1882 until at least the 1940s, according to two pieces of evidence I was able to find:
The first piece of evidence is this page (PDF) from a 1922 edition of the Fulton (NY) Patriot newspaper, which features an ad for Knopf Clothes that reads, in part: "NO BETTER MATERIALS and Tailoring are on the market than that of KNOPF CLOTHES -- Rochester make (sic), That have a reputation for high class tailoring since their organizing in 1922."
The second piece of evidence is in the collection of the Rochester Public Library. The library has a collection of clothing industry advertising materials that makes reference to Knopf Clothes catalogs and circulars from the years 1948-50.
If you look at these pictures, you'll clearly see that more than one sign was painted on this wall. If you can make out the rest of the sign, let me know.
Here's one I've driven by a million times without ever really noticing. This is a wall advertisement that says H-O STEAM COOKED THAT'S WHY. No, it's not a piece of DaDa poetry, it's an ad for H-O Steamed Oats, made by the Hecker HO Milling Company of Buffalo, NY. This ad is on the side of the at the intersection of Atlantic Ave. and University Ave. in Rochester (in the same parking lot as Writers & Books).
You can find out more about the Buffalo HO site courtesy of The Buffalo Citizen.
This ad for Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco is on the wall of a building in the 320 block of Hudson Ave. in Rochester. The city of Durham's History At A Glance site has this to say about the origins of the company:
"The origin of Durham’s nickname, the “Bull City,” has nothing to do with cattle!
John Green of the Blackwell Tobacco Company named his product “Bull” Durham Tobacco after Colman’s Mustard, which used a bull in its logo and which Green mistakenly thought was produced in Durham, England.
"By the time James B. Duke of the American Tobacco Company purchased the Blackwell Tobacco Company in 1898, Bull Durham was the most famous trademark in the world. It sparked such popular phrases as “bullpen” (from a Bull Durham ad painted behind the Yankees’ dugout) and “shooting the bull” (most likely from chewing tobacco). The famous bull’s image was painted all over the world, including on the Great Pyramid of Egypt!
"Duke put cigarette cards, predecessors of modern baseball cards, into each pack of tobacco. By the 1930’s they were immensely popular, and today they are much sought-after collectors’ items.
Directly across the street from the Beech-Nut plant is this wall-ad for Nohle Refrigeration Supplies. The ad is at 1144 E. Main St., where the company was located. Nohle was purchased in 1990 by Meier Supply of Johnson City, NY.
Ever had an A&W root beer? Then you've enjoyed the products of the J. Hungerford Smith Co., depicted in this sign along the railroad tracks between E. Main St. and Circle St. in Rochester. J. Hungerford Smith made the syrup from which A&W is made, and they bought A&W Root Beer Company itself in 1963.
The company was based in Rochester. According to Soda Fountain & Ice Cream Collectibles, J. Hungerford Smith was founded in the 1880's, and flourished from 1900-1915. The company still exists today.
You can see a photo of an 1890's jug of J. Hungerford Smith Co.'s "True Fruits" syrup at the Antique Medicine Bottles site.
Finally, here's a great ad for the company's Royal Purple Grape Juice.
