This isn’t the first time I’ve written about ghost signs, and I doubt it will be the last. Something about them keeps calling me back.
Maybe it’s the way they invite us to look closer at what we pass every day. Or maybe it’s the quiet dignity with which they endure, fading but not forgotten.
Rocky Mount still has these treasures, and each time I spot a new one, or revisit an old favorite, I see something different.
That’s the beauty of ghost signs: they don’t just advertise the past, they preserve it. They’re hiding in plain sight. Faint letters on brick.
A whisper of an old advertisement. A once-bold logo peeking through layers of time. In preservation circles, we call them ghost signs, and Rocky Mount still has them.
These hand-painted signs once covered nearly every downtown in America, turning ordinary buildings into canvases for Coca-Cola, hardware stores, and haberdasheries.
Before neon. Before vinyl. Before digital displays. Just brush, paint, and brick.
Rocky Mount’s ghost signs cling to walls weathered by time and sun. Others have been preserved by accident, tucked behind newer structures or hidden under plaster for decades.
When rediscovered, they can appear startlingly fresh, like time capsules revealing color, lettering, and local flavor from another era.
Why have these signs endured? Ironically, it’s the old lead-based paint, durable and toxic, that helped many survive. But also, in towns where redevelopment stalled, signs weren’t covered up or scrubbed away.
Communities have come to see these ghost signs as public art and historical record. Rocky Mount has these vintage treasures.
Look up. Look closely. You’ll start seeing them.
And once you do, you won’t stop.
There’s something comforting about the way time leaves its fingerprints. Ghost signs remind us that the past doesn’t disappear, it fades, lingers, and sometimes waits quietly to be noticed again.
Maybe that’s what preservation is really about: noticing.
Paying attention. Choosing to see what others pass by. And when we do, something forgotten becomes part of us again, adding color, story, and meaning to the place we call home.
Preservation isn’t always about restoring to perfection. Sometimes, it’s about honoring what remains, the faded, the weathered, the almost forgotten. Ghost signs remind us that the past doesn’t have to shout to be heard.
Sometimes, a whisper on a brick wall is all it takes to bring memory rushing back and to root us more deeply in the place we call home.
Main Street Rocky Mount 