It's a city where you can park next to The Hamilton Club for 25 cents an hour; where smoking is "Melo" and where you can you sip your Coca-Cola at a drug store. These ghost signs of Lancaster are still visible as you walk or drive around this many-layered city.

Ghost signs are those painted on the sides of buildings to advertise businesses that are long gone. The paint is faded, but readable, and the signs call up a world that was lived in not too long ago.

John Miller Drugs/Coca-Cola, 16 W. Orange St. Photo Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers

See how many you can find.

Some signs have gone forever. A sturdy brick warehouse at 138 N. Mary St., now converted to upscale living, once bore two signs: that of the Penn Nu-Cola company, a failed competitor of Coca-Cola, and of H&O Distilled water, which then took over. These signs disappeared when the building was sandblasted.

A large Pepsi-Cola sign at the corner of Chestnut and Queen has been sandblasted, as well as the Westenberger Maley & Myers Furniture and Carpets ad on East King Street.

Mack, The Coffee Man, 42 Water St. Photo Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers

Newly painted signs arise on city buildings, however, advertising very different products than those of yesteryear. Today's signs highlight art galleries, a hotel, an architect, a construction company and a filmmaker. They reflect the new and, at the same time, honor the old.

Materiel material

Reilly Bros. Entrance to Main

Market Street

Only half of this sign remains on Market Street next to the Quilt Museum, pointing the way to Reilly Brothers and Raub, once a major wholesale industrial supplier of paints, firearms and ammunition.

Founded in 1888 by Richard M. Reilly, whose previous job was as part owner and also part-time editor of the Intelligencer Journal, the store offered retail hardware; its personnel would order washing machines or stoves for customers, as well.

Smoke and Enjoy Melo = Crowns, 417 N. Prince St. Photo Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers

The store, in the '60s, still had pneumatic tubes that shot sales slips and money to a central spot; change was returned in those tubes.

The retail portion closed in 1968; the company moved to Manheim Township in 1971.

A powdery presence

The Home of Bismoline

Intersection of South Queen Street, north Route 222 and Church Street

Bismoline was a talcum powder, advertised as excellent for "diaper rash, adult rashes, prickly heat, chafing, urine burn, athletes' foot and as a deodorant."

In 1899, Lancaster pharmacist Acton Ash LeFevre created the Bismoline formula and sold it in his Popular Price Drug Store, which had "prices as small as pin points," according to his 1896 advertisement. Bismoline was packaged with a picture of LeFevre's daughter Ardythe on the container and, later, with a lithograph of a rose and violets.

Over the years, LeFevre moved the drugstore and eventually sold the business, which passed through several hands and locations.

Bisomoline is still manufactured at 411 S. Queen St. by Arthur H. Keen, who purchased the recipe in 1979 with several partners. According to Keen's wife, Rosemarie, Bismoline is sold to nursing homes up and down the East Coast and is available online and locally. The ghost sign remains, still doing its job at the original site.

Reilly Bros., Market Street Photo Courtesy Lancaster Newspapers

Sweet specter

Charles F. Adams

Confectioners

Cherry and Grant streets

Barely visible is the ornate lettering of the Charles F. Adams Confectioners sign at the intersection of Cherry and Grant streets. Built as a rental property in 1888 by brewer Lawrence Knapp, the property was used by the Lancaster Harness Factory in 1890, claiming to be the largest harness and collar factory between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Four years later, the building was vacant and, in 1900, Charles F. Adams bought the property for his candy factory. Adams later sold the building to the Frantz Candy Factory, locally noted for the production of marshmallows; the building was commonly called The Marshmallow Factory. Murray Risk Management and Insurance Co. purchased the building in the '90's and renovated it. The faded lettering remains on the north side.

Reincarnation

Smoke and Enjoy Melo = Crowns

417 N. Prince St.

"Melo " was once a brand of tobacco and 417 N. Prince St. was once a warehouse, built in 1907 by Otto Eisenlohr and Brothers, a Philadelphia tobacco company.

The building was later owned by A . K. Mann and Sons Tobacco Co.

Mann was a leading 20th-century tobacco dealer in Lancaster and this was one of a number of warehouses he owned.

At one time, Lancaster County was second only to New York in the production of tobacco.

The building, now known as the Swisher Building, is under renovation by The Drogaris Companies as the third and final phase of the Prince Street Centre project. It will have 24 luxury apartments on the top two floors, with 23,000 square feet of commercial, office, restaurant and entertainment space on the first. The building is being renovated according to the Department of Interior standards for historic buildings and the sign will remain in its existing form, said Ed P. Drogaris, president and CEO.n

Spirits' level

PARKING

25 cents

35 cents to 12 p.m.

50 cents all night

Rear of Breneman building, 53 and 61 N. Duke St.

The 1909 Breneman building, designed by Henry Bartholomew, fronts on 53 N. Duke St., next to The Hamilton Club. At one time, it housed the C.S. Burkholder Chrysler showroom. complete with large plate-glass windows.

The rear of the building, on Cherry Street, contained a ground floor that provided the parking and a freight elevator, which carried cars to the showroom.

The building has had a number of owners, including Ralph W. Coho, who at one time owned both Maple Grove Park and the Fulton Opera House. At an unknown time, number 53 was joined to number 61. The filled-in glass portion can still be seen on Duke Street.

The building was purchased in 1989 by Patti and Harry Connell, who discovered a half-flight of stairs leading to a suite of rooms on the fifth floor, which cannot be seen from the street.

Oral tradition says that this was used during Prohibition for drinking alcoholic beverages.

Maybe the ghosts are still there.

Today, the building contains 33 offices with 21 parking spaces for the tenants; the cost of parking "is the same as the Parking Authority," said Patti Connell.

According the the Lancaster Parking Authority Web site, www.lancasterparkingauthority.com, current rates are $2 for the first hour, $1 per additional hour or fraction thereof, for a maximum daily charge of $14. Monthly fee is $65.

Social entity

John Miller Drugs

Coca-Cola

16 W. Orange St.

This ghost sign can be seen as you walk west on Orange Street, painted on the side of the building.

The J.A. Miller Drugstore was at 56 N. Queen Street. That address is now part of the Place Marie building at Central Market Mall.

John W. W. Loose, noted Lancaster historian, said that Miller's had a soda fountain and was "the" place to go after school for Cokes. He recalls walking there from McCaskey High School. Another "in" drugstore was Coopers on the same block, Loose said.

Trace of history

Mack, The Coffee Man

42 Water St.

This is a " new" old sign in bold black and white. It once held the roasting facility for the coffee business that was founded in 1895 by Horace Mack and continued by his son, J. Edward Mack. Mack is remembered by many Boy Scouts as the man whose generosity made possible the 1,040-acre J. Edward Mack Boy Scout Reservation in Brickerville. The building is now owned by the Fulton Opera House and the sign not only is preserved, but has been repainted to honor the historic tradition.

Sources: Suzanne Stallings, City Historic Preservation Specialist; John W.W. Loose, Lancaster County Historical Society; Nancy Haubert, Historic Preservation Trust; Lancaster Board of Trade Publications 1909; Historic Preservation Survey, 1979; Lancaster Newspaper reference library; "The Lancaster That Was" by Ashley Kline & Emma Hamme.