Sign Said You Got to Have a Membership Card to Get Inside

When I began to write this post, I thought of this song from the '70s called "Signs," so you'll have to excuse the title of this post. It has nothing to do with anything, except for the fact that the song was speaking about signs, and signs are precisely what I'm going to be talking about right now. I would like to argue that this song can be made relevant to every discussion of signs, because signs are created to simultaneously welcome and exclude. They tell you whether you belong before you even know where you are. However, I'm not going to argue this because that's not the point of this blog. Moving right along.

I tried to focus on some iconic signs to be found on the Avenue of the Arts, and then to highlight some spots that are also to be found there but that are unlikely to come to mind when you think of that section of Broad Street. As one could guess, there were many signs of theaters that looked like pretty standard staples of architecture. In this area of Philadelphia one can find UArt's Merriam Theater and Kimmel Center, both, to me, not particularly compelling visually. The main thing that distinguished them was their size and prominent location on the building. There were other theaters, however, that I felt made  use of much more original stylistic decisions.

Both of these examples, The Wilma Theater and the Suzzane Roberts Theatre implemented strikingly unusual visuals. Each sign was structured around a curved line, yet produced very different results.

The Suzanne Roberts Theatre sign, designed to look as if it was written in cursive handwriting, was placed in front of long iridescent orange and pink/purple curved backdrop that highlighted the sign beautifully. It inspired a sense of flashy theatrics.

Across the street, the Wilma Theater boldly structures giant letters that spell "WILMA" around this steel curved support piece that serves essentially as the spine of the sign. This was probably the most creatively inspiring sign I saw, despite its lack of color and pizazz, because is structured very uniquely to look as if the letters are falling along this steel wave. Of course, if you are in the mood for some color and pizazz, venturing back to this area at night wouldn't be a bad idea. It's striking how different the mood of the Avenue of the Arts is from day to night.

I traveled from the Walnut-Locust station to just a little beyond South street to see what I can see. Unfortunately there is not space here to share absolutely everything I observed, but one thing I did think might be interesting to note was the presence of graffiti and the state of the following signs:

Graffiti over the sign indicating the entrance to a walk-in clinic

I saw the sign to the left first, then the one feature below. There is some graffiti to be found during the journey down this area of Broad Street, but the presence of the graffiti on these two signs marking the entrance of a clinic made me stop and think for a moment. Have the theaters in this area, the hotels, the fancy restaurants, all been graced with good fortune in being spared from the spray painted tags of local "street artists?" I doubt that.


I think this nicely illustrates a question of what the priorities of a city block are. This is a region of Broad Street devoted to the arts. The artistically inclined regions of this street thus must look clean, if patrons with money to burn are going to buy into the area. On a separate path of thought, I do find it interesting to know that people would so heavily mark up the signs of a clinic entrance.  Clinics, after all, are created to help maintain the public health. If that's not a cause worthy of maybe, I don't know, not covering up with some cheap paint... I'm honestly not sure why any building devoted to such a need should be disrespected in this way.

The signs of the theaters and hotels surrounding this clinic look just fine, their "Is" dotted and their "Ts" crossed, and all of their letters in attendance, yet but a building devoted to health services is missing the "P" and the "I" from a sign. The result is a bottom line that reads "CITY OF H LADELPHIA." It is great to have well-maintained buildings devoted to the arts and to education, however, to see a building devoted to health services that has had its very signs vandalized in this way is a shame. The bottom line here is that perhaps some of the services this city has to offer are not reflected as priorities, in the very basic way that they are represented by their signs, and perhaps that needs to change. I wanted to include these because I found it striking that the city of Philadelphia doesn't seem to mind being represented in this way.

Department of Public Health. Check.
Community Health Services. Check.
500 South Broad Street. Check.
City of H Ladelphia. Really guys?

The final sign I am featuring reads "YOUNG MEN'S & YOUNG WOMEN'S HEBREW ASS'N". I've never seen association abbreviated in this way before. Allow me to childishly acknowledge that I just realized it looks a little funny. 

That's not the reason why I am posting a picture of this, I promise. Truth be told, I've never heard of a YMYWHA before. I am familiar with YMCAs and I know there are also YWCAs, however, I wanted to make mention of this because I never have heard of this sort of group before and I thought it was quite telling that these letters are carved into the edifice. It indicates to me that this is a group of some great historical significance. Being along my walk down the Avenue of the Arts, it caught my attention that a club associated with Judaism was also occupying the space. Like the Dept of Public Health building mentioned above, I wouldn't have thought that I'd find this building on a section of Broad Street known for its ties to the arts. However, I'm glad I did. In a way, these were far more interesting to look at. Being surrounded by posh buildings that house fancy restaurants, hotels, and theaters, it was enlightening to stumble upon this other piece of this area's history.

Impressive. Not like that boring Kimmel Center nonsense.
Honestly just take a moment and think about the labor that went into creating a piece of work like this.