My grandpa's 1954 photos of downtown Akron finally made sense

I've been scanning his old slides for months, and the 1954 shots of Main Street show this huge neon sign for the old Polsky's department store. Last week I found a 1958 photo from the same corner and the sign is gone, replaced by a plain brick front. Turns out the city banned the big rooftop signs that year over fire worries, so the whole block looked totally different in just 4 years. Anybody else notice how fast downtowns changed in the late 50s once those ordinances hit?

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the_val10d ago

Your grandpa's photos caught a moment where the city made a choice, and the whole street paid for it. But here's what gets me: did the fire worry actually pan out? Like, did those rooftop signs cause a bunch of blazes after 1958, or was it more about what the big stores wanted? Because banning something that fast usually means somebody with money pushed it through. And if it was just a few bad fires, then we basically erased a whole look of the city for nothing. I'd love to know if your research ever turned up the real reason behind that ordinance, beyond what the newspapers said. Seems like those old city council minutes might tell a different story.