NEW YORK—As a child, Tom Rinaldi traveled from his upstate home to visit his father’s family in Brooklyn. The city’s neon signs drew him in; The green glow of Dublin House on West 79th Street, the ruby beacon of Colony Records on Broadway with the girl in the poodle skirt who perpetually jumped in excitement with a record in her hand.
“There is something about a neon tube that is visually compelling, like staring into a fireplace. It’s just mesmerizing,” wrote Rinaldi in an email.
Rinaldi now lives in Chelsea and nervously watches the dimmed neon light of the Chelsea Hotel sign. When renovations on the hotel began, the sign went out, and Rinaldi worries it might go the way of so many of its brothers replaced by LED-lit signs.
When he finished writing “Hudson Valley Ruins,” on threatened historic sites along the Hudson River, Rinaldi turned his attention to neon signs and began photographing the rare and dying breed for an upcoming book, “New York Neon.”
He hopes to preserve the signs by drawing attention to their dwindling numbers. He also blogs (http://nyneon.blogspot.com). He recently posted photos of all the neon signs the city lost in 2011, including Macy’s on 34th Street and Seventh Avenue, and the Milford Plaza Hotel on Eighth Avenue.
“Today, the older signs have the added appeal of nostalgia, of rarity—most of them have disappeared,” said Rinaldi. Some business owners stopped using the signs because they were associated with “unseemly kinds of businesses,” explains Rinaldi, but people also identify the signs with some of the old bars and restaurants that give a neighborhood character—the kinds of places replaced in some areas now by banks and other chain businesses.
