New Orleans Square Signage

GDB friend Mike Cozart sent me some scans of photos that he acquired from a former Sign Shop employee. All of today's signs are from New Orleans Square. One of my favorite squares! This is "Part One", there will be a "Part Two" eventually.

First up, a sign for The Royal Courtyard. Know what? I'm not sure what (or where) this is (was?)! Probably because the Royal family always kept me out of the loop. You know how snooty they are. This sign is elegant, and appears to be hand-painted in the finest pin-striping tradition. There are no flames, but you can't have it all. 

"Le Gourmet", where they probably sold hot-air popcorn poppers and "Veg-O-Matics". For into about these photos, Mike said: At one time the Disneyland sign shop would send a photographer out approximately every 5 years and photograph EVERY sign and graphic in the park over a few days . These were from one of those “sign safaris” by the sign shop in 1973 (although some are dated 1972) the sign shop photographer always got the main signs and marquees but also managed to shoot images of flags, posters , banners, plaques , vehicle door and safety tags and even directional arrows painted on the walkways.

Hey, wait a minute! This sign is way fancier! At first I thought I saw a Pocket Fisherman in this painting, but it's just a standard scoop. This is certainly more elaborate than most of the signs we see in these pictures. Mike had more information about these photos: The images were done on slide film and photo prints were made for quick reference . These images are from those reference prints. Besides the sign shop , the graphics department at WED and the studio archives would be sent albums of these reference prints. Disneyland would also send a set to Walt Disney World’s sign shop as “this is how we did it at Disneyland“ reference.

"Le Grand Court", where you had to go for jury duty every few years. Florida in kind also sent similar albums to Disneyland. When things at Disneyland were being re-arranged in the late 90’s, the slides were sent to WDI for storage while the reference photo albums were tossed out. My set was saved by a retired WED graphic artist who started at the sign shop. Although now passed, many of my signs and posters in my collection came from his 25 years with WED and Disneyland. VERY COOL, and thank goodness Mike saved these. 

And lastly (for today), Le Forgeron. Not "Le Frogeron", where you could buy frogs (unfortunately). "Forgeron" means "blacksmith", so I assume you could buy all sorts of hand-wrought iron doo-dads. Need cast iron shoes? They had them! Le Forgeron was located back near the train tracks, and apparently closed in 1974.

Stay tuned for PART TWO! Many thanks to Mike Cozart for sharing these cool photos with us.