VIRGINIA BEACH — Terri Lavenstein was a teenager when a large fiberglass horse became a fixture at her parent’s tack shop.
For more than 50 years, the rearing stallion with its muzzle pointed to the sky has been mounted on the roof of Acredale Saddlery, at the crux of Kempsville and Indian River roads, one of the busiest intersections in Virginia Beach.
“He’s the horse on top,” said Lavenstein.
The animal is one of only a few iconic Virginia Beach signs that remain, a relic of a time when the city allowed campy, oversized displays to advertise a business.
In 2024, the city’s zoning division approved 383 sign permits, which included ones for new signs, modifications to existing signs and the refacing of existing signs. All of them adhere to size regulations that aim to declutter the landscape.
But it wasn’t always that way.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the Virginia Beach resort strip looked like a sea of kitschy signs. Flashy billboards lined parts of Virginia Beach Boulevard.
Large square marquees advertising subs, pizza and suntan lotion protruded from the roofs of souvenir shops and restaurants on Atlantic Avenue. The Acredale Saddlery horse used to advertise the Mustang Restaurant & Lounge. An oversized Peter Pan figure balanced a plate of syrupy pancakes in one hand at Peter Pan Cakes, and a lavish bubble-gum pink carousel top turned heads at the Carousel Motel.