---
title: "Ghost sign"
description: "A faded, hand-painted advertisement surviving on the brick of an older building, a remnant of early signwriting many cities now document as heritage."
glossary: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary"
source: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/ghost-sign"
---

# Ghost sign

> A faded, hand-painted advertisement surviving on the brick of an older building, a remnant of early signwriting many cities now document as heritage.

Glossary: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary  
Source: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/ghost-sign

Ghost signs occupy an odd category: commercial speech that outlived its
commerce and became beloved. They're increasingly inventoried alongside
murals in cultural asset maps, and they anchor some of the best walking-tour
content a city has, because every sign carries a story about what the street
used to sell.

The preservation debate is genuinely unsettled: repaint them to legibility,
or conserve the fade as-is? For many enthusiasts the patina is the point. A
freshly repainted ghost sign is, by definition, no longer a ghost.

Related terms: [Mural](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/mural), [Cultural asset mapping](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/cultural-asset-mapping)