Painted Walls
The origins of outdoor advertising: 19th-century bill posters pasting playbills on any flat surface, the painted brick 'wall dogs', ghost signs and the trade that literally gave us the word 'billboard'.
Part of Billboards
7 moments in this segment.
- - The circus and the giant poster. Barnum and the great circuses pioneered the spectacular multi-sheet poster pasted across whole barns and walls.
- - Ghost signs. Faded painted-wall ads survive on old buildings for a century, the 'ghost signs' of a lost advertising age. The subject dates from 1910; this photograph was taken in 2009.
- - The playbill and the poster. Theaters and circuses papered towns with posters; the demand for space created the trade of the bill sticker.
- - The wall dogs and painted walls. 'Wall dogs' hand-painted enormous advertisements directly onto brick, high above the street.
- - The first Coca-Cola wall sign. Coca-Cola painted its first wall advertisement in Cartersville, Georgia, in 1894, a sign still visible today.
- - The bill posters. Before printing presses ran the world, bill posters pasted playbills and notices on every fence and wall, the original outdoor advertising.
- - The standardized billboard. Around 1900 the industry standardized the poster panel, and the modern rentable billboard was born.