Abstract
In older downtowns the casual observer's eye can still be arrested by spectral presences from the commercial past. Where space is available on brick or stone, ancient advertising murals preside over parking lots, littered playgrounds, construction projects. Often only faintly discernible amid banks and fast-food franchises, some announce products – Uneeda Biscuit, Wilson's Whiskey; some are populated by fading fantastic characters – the Gold Dust twins, the White Rock girl. Once-banal adjuncts of everyday life, they exert more fascination as they recede from view.

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