Milwaukee has many iconic neon signs. But one caught the attention of Bubbler Talk question asker Lauren Keene.
I want to know what happened to the “Please Be Civil” sign that used to sit in the window at Humboldt & North?Lauren Keene
So, I found the person that made the "Please Be Civil" neon sign: Tom Galbraith, an independent neon artist who has been working out of his Riverwest studio for decades.
The sign said three simple words — Please Be Civil. The words were lit up in red neon, and the sign hung in the window facing the corner of North Ave. and Humboldt Ave. in Milwaukee for about six years.
It wasn't a large sign, but if you ever drove or walked past that corner, you saw it.
"The inspiration for [the sign] was a lot of rudeness in the neighborhood, in the city, and it was just my way of processing all the ugliness," Tom says.
Tom says that he made the sign sometime in 2013 or 2014. But why was this sign in the building in the first place?
"The owner of the building, Damian Zak, was living there. ... I approached him one time and I said, 'Nothing's going on in your building. Could I put a neon in there?' and he said, 'Oh yeah sure,'" Tom recalls.
So, what all goes into making a neon sign?
"There's a glass bending, glass blowing component and then there's the vacuum technology component that gas transfer and gas evacuation. And then there's really heavy-duty electricity to get the neon hot, up to about 500 degrees. And it's a very, very dangerous occupation. You have to be really careful doing it," Tom says.
And as for the current whereabouts of the sign, Tom chuckles and says, "I don't know. ... Somebody bought it from me."
As for the actual building that housed the neon sign, it has a storied history.
Elizabeth Hilton, the National Register Coordinator at the State Historic Preservation Office of the Wisconsin Historical Society, says:
The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company Saloon, located at 2249 N Humboldt Avenue in Milwaukee, was constructed in 1890. Designed in the Romanesque style, the building was erected in masonry construction as a tavern by architect Charles Kirchhoff, who designed nine other buildings for Schlitz. Character defining features of the building include round arches, defined belt courses, conical tower, decorative brick corbeling, and heavy use of masonry. The building was determined potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in April 2022, displaying significance as a unique property type, a Tied House, where it was built by the Schlitz Brewing Company and leased to a local operator selling only their beer. This property is noted as one of the earliest known brewery-owned bars.Wisconsin Historical Society
The conical tower is gone, and the building's south wing was demolished by the city in 2019.
But the answer to Lauren’s Bubbler Talk question is: Tom sold it and he doesn’t know where it is.
But Tom’s neon work is all over the city — from the Zocalo food truck park, to Leon’s Custard, to Y-Not 2, to Strange Town and the list goes on.
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