[BifRayRock]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I remember seeing the unique rifle & pistol sign, but not from this angle.

The St. Charles Hotel between Temple and Aliso St.

ebay/date unknown

This rifle & pistol shooting sign has always intrigued me. What are the three 'vents' on top, and why is the sign so THICK?
Did it light up? (using gas perhaps) It's just really odd. It reminds me of an arcade sign at a carnival.
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Is it real? An experiment with mixed results?





Your earlier post approximated the date as 1876. Are there other images that include the sign from another vantage point?

The sign seems an historical anomaly, or maybe something other than we suspect, which may have been the primary reason for the attention-grabbing photo. Its very subject presents itself as great target for mischief. Compared with the presumably normal-sized human standing near the sign, the sign looks quite big. This might explain its width and the fancy (presumed) cast iron supports. What tends to look like vents support the conclusion of back lighting. Yet a big backlit sign would have required many lumens to be effective, so maybe given the weird scale of the sign, those are "smoke stacks" - rather than vents. A big sign might have been easier to illuminate via exterior reflected light.

Unless the maker had invented plexiglass or transparent aluminum, a backlit sign was likely mica or glass, and therefore fragile. Stones and other small objects were a known hazard to glass (and even mica) in the late 19th Century. Flying objects were known to occur when stage coaches needed to keep on schedule (verified by watching Hopalong Cassidy and Gunsmoke) and when normal school was in recess.

Did the sign advertise a shooting range that some distance away? When there was probably quite a bit of nearby unimproved land, for use as a make-shift range, was there really much demand for an in-town shooting range? (Unless it also served drinks, food and ammo.) A "legalized" in-town range would have been a nuisance to nearby humans and livestock. ("Come stay in the St. Charles Hotel! Conveniently located near a modern, state of the art, super-quiet, rifle range?")





http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2...comesstcha.jpg http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...postcount=2528


Similar, less-incendiary signage? (these were presumably electrified)
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=12931



http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...ostcount=11623






With enough firepower, your range is where you find it.

Mr. McKee, son of Cherokee Charlie who rode with the Dalton boys, is at his Silver Wolf ranch, 240 acres in the Boney Range of the Santa Monica Mountains behind Thousand Oaks. Photograph dated: July 23, 1959.

http://jpg1.lapl.org/00083/00083101.jpg