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Neon Signs on Granville Street: Looking north on the eastern side of Granville street at the Movieland Arcade and Orpheum signs - Photographed November 24, 2008. (Other Neon Signs in Vancouver Lower Mainland)

In background is the Orpheum Theater located at 884 Granville Street, Vancouver - designed by B. Marcus Priteca; Frederick J. Peters, 1926-27. The 2,800-seat Vancouver outpost of the Chicago-based Orpheum vaudeville circuit was once the largest theater in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. The lavish interior decorative scheme, derived from the Spanish Baroque, features exuberant arches, tiered columns and interlaced moldings executed in marble, travertine, cast stone and plaster. Priteca was the chosen architect of the rival Pantages circuit and a master of theater design; Vancouver's long-demolished Pantages Theater (1916-17, later the Majestic) was also his. Opened in the year in which "talkies" were introduced, the Orpheum was used more and more for movies. In the early 1970s former owner Famous Players wanted to divide the by-now tired theater into several small cinemas. With strong community support the city bought the Orpheum and rehabilitated it for use by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and Partners, 1975-76). Recent changes to the beautiful auditorium (Architectura, begun 1995), driven by acoustic and other functional considerations, have unfortunately compromised the original design.

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Neon signs history in Vancouver started out in about 1924 when enterprising Granville street merchants imported the first 'eye-grabbing' modern advertising technology. Neon Signs had a reputation of literally stopping traffic. This liquid light was imported from Claude Neon Company of Paris, France. George Claude Started his business of making signs when he exhibited a small sign using neon gas at the Grand Palais in 1910. His fame was secured when he sold a simple blue and red neon sign to a Packard Automobile dealer in Los Angeles. They stopped traffic with their warm glow at night.

The Neon Gas product was actually a waste product from experiments to purify oxygen, and found an excess of neon gas. Sealed in a glass tube and bombarded with an electrical current, this gas would produce a red/orange glow. Argon produces a blue glow. Claude achieved a strong steady light with further experiments and was granted a patent in 1915.

By the 1960s, the market for Neon Signs started to become over saturated. It is possible that new generation hippie movement with thoughts of getting back to nature away from urban decay triggered the death of the ending of neon's glory days.

Fortunately, new thinking has revitalized the neon sign as city planners and merchants have realized the value of color in advertising and the value of character signs. Next time you are out for a drive take a look at some of the old marquee signs like Stanley Theater on Granville street and Hollywood Theater on West Broadway and you'll see why such artistic beauty survives.