American Sign Museum

The American Sign Museum is dedicated to the art and history of commercial signs and sign making. The Museum preserves, archives, and displays a collection of advertising signs and the technology utilized in the design and manufacture of signs.

The museum displays over 200 signs and related objects; it also has over 3,800 items cataloged. 

The collection starts from the late nineteenth century and overs more than 100 years of American sign history.

The museum facility displays many of its signs in a faux streetscape typical of “Main Street USA,” with shop windows full of sign-related objects.

Neonworks of Cincinnati, a neon workshop, is located inside the museum and shows tube-benders working their craft making signs for today’s needs.

Highlights of the American Sign Museum

• Samples of Gold Leaf Lettering on Glass
• A Sputnik-like plastic orb from an Anaheim shopping center
• A rotating neon windmill from a Denver donut shop
• Las Vegas showcards
• A fiberglass Frisch’s Big Boy statue 
• Businesses Signs such as Big Bear Stores, Howard Johnson’s, and Earl Scheib
• A single-arch 1963 McDonald’s sign from Huntsville, Alabama
• Johnny’s Big Red Grill, from a restaurant near Cornell University