When visitors walked into the Vanishing Seattle exhibit last year in the RailSpur building, curator and Vanishing Seattle founder Cynthia Brothers could see their physical reactions to the signs from bygone businesses. “There was something very visceral and emotional I witnessed,” says Brothers. The signs from restaurants, and bars, particularly, touched visitors. “A lot of these places were more like community centers in some ways.”

Brothers began documenting businesses closing and buildings being torn down around the city on the Vanishing Seattle website and social media in 2016. She has since expanded to documentary films, the exhibit, and now a book, Signs of Vanishing Seattle (July 28, Tome Press). The book chronicles the exhibit, illustrated with photos of the signs as they hung in the space and punctuated with personal memories of each bygone business left on sticky notes by attendees.

“Seattle, as a boom-and-bust city, especially being in a boom period for a while, changes very quickly and very drastically in a way that’s physical,” Brothers says. In signs, she found a visual way to represent the evolving landscape and show that the city loses something bigger than just buildings as it grows. “A lot of these businesses are more than just places of transaction. A lot of them really shaped and were impactful in the social and the cultural lives and history of the city.”

It's hardly a complete collection: she crowdsourced the signs from what customers scrounged as their favorite dive bars closed or what business owners tossed into storage decades ago. But looking at the signs from restaurants gives long-time residents a walk down memory lane and newcomers a glimpse of what once was. “It's kind of like a tribute to the places that have shaped us.”

While the book is available now to order from the Vanishing Seattle website, Brothers offered a preview of five of the most interesting restaurant and bar signs featured inside.

Double Header

When the Double Header closed its doors in 2015, it ended the 81-year run of the country’s oldest gay bar. When it opened in 1934, Capitol Hill wasn’t yet the city’s main gayborhood, so Pioneer Square drew many of the city’s marginalized communities. The book features not only the retro-style green sign with the bar’s name, but also old-timey photos of a drag performer found in the bar. “If you ventured inside, you were likely to catch a drag show,” say the sign’s owners, Steve Nyman and Nathan Benedict, in the book.

Turf

Brothers particularly likes when a restaurant still has ties to existing businesses, as in the case of the Turf: it became Ludi’s Diner, which then lost its lease. Now, Ludi’s is reopened, a few blocks away. “[The Turf] is emblematic of old downtown,” she says, and it served as a community center for many people living on the fringes of society. “They can go there and get their checks cashed and have a cold beer and a hot sandwich. It's a place that took care of a lot of people who were down on their luck.”

Golden Pheasant

While many of the signs come from places that closed recently, the Golden Pheasant served Chinese food in the Chinatown–International District from 1929 until sometime in the mid-1970s. Beyond the significance of the long-running restaurant itself, the 1873 building was the site of the city’s first dedicated kindergarten, donated by Babette Schwabacher Gatzert, wife of Seattle mayor Bailey Gatzert. It’s now an office building and City of Seattle Historic Landmark.

Still Life Cafe

When Fremont was still the quirky artists' neighborhood it so desperately pretends to remain, the Still Life (1986–2003) served as its Bohemian headquarters, gallery, and stage. The offbeat sign, with painted tuna cans along the top and splintered boards along the bottom sandwiching elegant letters, provides accurate representation of the place. “You could find folks from all walks of life there,” Brothers says.

Sorry Charlies

The book collects memories from visitors to the exhibition, and the ones for this Lower Queen Anne piano bar offer a particularly poignant glimpse of the place. “Babs was my mom and she lit the place up,” reads one. Another describes the “surreal and fantastic” experience of watching their server take a break to sing opera with Howard Bulson, the pianist. And all this at a place, a third paper notes, which pushed the limits of last call and served drinks for 30 minutes longer than surrounding bars.