A piece of roadside Americana comes down soon. The cheery vanilla cone at the First Avenue, SW, Dairy Queen is scheduled for replacement.
The sign went up nearly 56 years ago, when the restaurant opened in 1954. Back then, diners ate in the light of neon letters glowing beneath the cone.
Time proved tricky for the neon, which eventually gave way to decals bearing the Dairy Queen name. But the cone, that dollop of summertime, stayed the same while the neighborhood around it changed.
The sign — and the vintage 50s diner that backs it up — is a favorite subject of photographers, according to Pat Burns, who owns the First Avenue Dairy Queen.
She says she's seen hundreds of people stop in the parking lot for pictures.
Some drivers have gotten too close a look.
"The sign has been whacked several times by cars," Burns says.
A new DQ sign, bearing the company's swirling red, white, blue and gold logo, will take the place of the vanilla cone. That has to happen before the end of 2010, and will probably be at the end of next week, according to Burns. It's a requirement by International Dairy Queen, Burns says.
She'll put up posts to keep folks from hitting her mandatory investment, which costs thousands.
Burns hoped to keep her cone for the top of the building, but the company says she won't be able to do that.
Instead, she's looking for a buyer.
Historic signs have plenty of fans, even if you don't count the photographers lured by Burns' Dairy Queen.
In Charlotte, a historical group launched a "Save Our Signs" campaign. It's aimed at safeguarding signs that are less advertisement and more relics, reminders of a time when something as innocent as a frosty roadside cone was sure to catch the attention of an auto-crazed culture. One of the locations the Charlotte group is eyeing for sign preservation: a Dairy Queen.
The National Park Service has this to say about vintage signs: "Historic signs give continuity to public spaces, becoming part of the community memory.… In an age of uniform franchise signs and generic plastic "box" signs, historic signs often attract by their individuality."
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