The Brief
- A grassroots community effort successfully restored Petaluma’s historic 91-year-old “Baby Chicks” neon sign over the weekend.
- The $22,000 restoration project was funded entirely through a GoFundMe campaign started by the Petaluma Signs Project.
- Advocates hope the project serves as a model for hundreds of other California communities to preserve their own historic signage.
PETALUMA, Calif. – The age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, may have finally been answered over the weekend in Petaluma, where a beloved but neglected historic sign was reborn through community power. In this case, the chicken and the egg both came first.
Historic neon sign
What we know:
Petaluma’s “Baby Chicks” neon sign, located in front of the former Poehlmann Hatchery, looks just like it did the day it was first mounted 91 years ago. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Petaluma was known as the “Egg Basket of the World,” and it remains an important agricultural center today.
The Baby Chicks sign was originally erected in 1935, but it fell into poor repair as the decades passed. The total $22,000 restoration was strictly a grassroots GoFundMe effort. Historian Katherine Rinehart served as the initial catalyst for the project.…