Melbourne Ghost Signs

Explore some fascinating glimpses of a great city’s past lives with the insightful Melbourne Ghost Signs, a collection of images preserving the forgotten and faded signs of businesses gone by.

From the gold-rush years to the Swinging Sixties, from Robur Tea to Tarax soft drinks, this city can never settle. In a process of continual renewal, old buildings are incorporated into new, both uncovering and obscuring snippets of history. Ghost signs provide hints to our common heritage, ready to be picked up by the keen eye and quick shutter.

Sean Reynolds, a transplanted American, first became fascinated by these old signs while walking in Yarraville and Footscray with his young daughter during their daily lockdown outings. He loved the hand-painted letters, the intricate glasswork, and the old factories marketing brands he’d never heard of before: big names like Uncle Tobys and Four’n Twenty, but also smaller ones, no less important, like ‘Miss Watson’s Motor Garage’ or the ‘St Kilda Coffee Palace’.