The little sculpture affixed to your house

August 12, 2020 8:50 AM

Hungarian-American metal artisan Anton Fazekas (1878-1966) designed and patented illuminated house-number signs with ornate metal housings that were the rage in San Francisco in the first half of the 20th century, and were promoted by a campaign by the San Francisco Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
posted by larrybob (18 comments total)

Ooh, house numbers.
posted by cortex at 9:01 AM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

These are so smart looking. Were they still being made, I'd order one today.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:35 AM on August 12, 2020

This reminds me of the ones on the houses and buildings in Russia. The Nonconformist Art Group in St Petersburg even uses one as their logo.
I have seen the ones you talk about in SF but of course had no idea how much of a thing they apparently were.
posted by boilermonster at 9:36 AM on August 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Huh! I love these things but never knew their story. I occasionally see these for sale at the Alemany Flea Market that happens every Sunday, if you're interested in trying to find one. You'll see the number plates quite often, and the frames less frequently.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:46 AM on August 12, 2020

This is fabulous.
posted by niicholas at 9:48 AM on August 12, 2020

Nice post! More Fazekas patents.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:24 AM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh, these are wonderful. I've seen them all over and somehow never realized they were illuminated. (Possibly I'm just not always very observant.)

And that is a wonderfully complete, thoroughly researched article. I started with just a glance and quick skim, but there's a lot of great information there.

I'm going to have to link to this from my San Francisco architecture blog.

Thank you so much for posting this, larrybob! This made my morning.
posted by kristi at 10:25 AM on August 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

I wish so much that buildings these days encouraged the flourishes and designs made with a specific artistic creative aesthetic encouraged in the 1800s and and early 1900s. It seems as though realtors would shirk anything like this these days for the same reason they repaint all the walls white before trying to sell a house.
posted by Theiform at 10:28 AM on August 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

Oy!
posted by growabrain at 10:30 AM on August 12, 2020

Were they still being made, I'd order one today.

It looks like they'd be pretty straightforward to copy using modern plastics casting methods; the only real trick I think would be to find someone who's got one, and who also doesn't mind you making a cast of it (potentially in-situ). Then it's just the usual epoxy and metal powder casting, and people probably wouldn't notice yours is a copy unless they looked really damn close.

...might even be possible to use a 3D printer, if anyone can grab a couple salient dimensions.

In fact, I'm mildly surprised nobody seems to have done this yet, but I suppose this is one of those little details in life that gets overlooked until suddenly it isn't.
posted by aramaic at 10:43 AM on August 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

Speaking of style, I wish newspaper editorials still sounded like this:

San Franciscans have been too coy about their addresses. They have made a secret of their house numbers, concealing the numerals in dark and mysterious retreats, as if the numbers were moon-flowers that would fold up in daylight.

Thanks for the post, larrybob! I was aware that these numbers were A Thing (and an obvious influence on house number design in planned developments well beyond the borders of SF), but I never knew their story. They always make me think "Turn your hymnal to page..."
posted by aws17576 at 10:48 AM on August 12, 2020 [8 favorites]

"Turn your hymnal to page..."

That's it! I was puzzling to think of what the font reminded me of.
posted by benzenedream at 12:00 PM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh, that's a very familiar thing! I never thought about why it was so common in SF.
posted by tavella at 12:03 PM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for that!

Puts me in mind of a similar topic, which is that businesses in New York are required to have "channel letter" signage, (a painted awning will sometimes suffice), and nowadays those 3D "extruded" letters are bought individually from catalogs. There was a time when these signs were handmade in metal shops by artisans, with logos in script.

That might be a postworthy subject someday.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:59 PM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wow, my grandparents had something very similar on their house! It must have been some kind of knockoff.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:59 PM on August 12, 2020

I have one of these on my house (built 1942) in San Mateo, CA. I regret not verifying that the wiring to it works when we had the whole inside of the house torn up and mostly retired a few years ago. The light on the number plate hasn’t worked as long as we’ve lived here and I’ve sadly never fiddled with it. There are others on many of the houses on our street, some definitely functional. What a delight knowing it’s provenance.
posted by pkingdesign at 12:15 AM on August 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

We have one of those on our house in Cincinnati! The whole neighborhood has them. I literally cannot remember if ours still lights up. I'll have to check tonght.
posted by cooker girl at 9:29 AM on August 13, 2020

...might even be possible to use a 3D printer, if anyone can grab a couple salient dimensions.

Also, replace the lightbulb with some high-efficiency LEDs, and add some solar cells to charge the battery during daylight hours/act as a light sensor, and you have a unit that doesn't need either replaceable batteries or wiring.
posted by acb at 2:18 PM on August 13, 2020