From random sections at my website — I wrapped Giant Food, Giant Containers, Art Deco/Streamline Modern buildings, Paul Bunyan statues…  and here are some of my discoveries.

I’m happy to report this miracle.  This giant orange in Mount Dora, FL was built in 1973.  It closed in 1984 and remained vacant.  I took this photo in 2009:

In 2014, it was adopted and moved to Umatilla, FL where it was completely restored at its new home:  Sunsational Citrus.  The following photo appears in this news article:
http://www.wptv.com/news/state/umatilla-giant-orange-landmark-of-florida-citrus-industry-restored

http://sunsationalcitrus.com/comersus7F/store/aboutorange.asp

If you’re interested in more giant oranges, my page about them is here:
http://www.roadarch.com/food/oranges.html

Here’s one place that I was really looking forward to seeing & shooting in Chicago — tacky as it might seem.  Evidently, these pizza slices started out as searchlight beams for a Planet Hollywood.  Geno’s moved in around 2007 and by 2009 one of the shapes was transformed into a pizza slice.  By 2011, all four of them had become giant slices: [Google Street View]

Then last summer, the slices and the entire building came down.  Ah well…

I shot this giant Nantucket Nectars bottle at a junkyard in Dos Palos, CA in 2014.  It was gone by last May.  I hope it found a good home:

The Cup restaurant in Pottstown, PA was built in the 1940s by Levengood Dairies.  The company built at least four of these buildings.   The Pottstown location closed shortly after I took this photo of the place in 2007:

It reopened a few years later and then closed again.  Since 2013, the building has been housing Mannino’s Pizzeria [Google Street View].  The cute straw in the cup is gone but I’m glad to see the place back in use:

The Cup building in Pennsburg, PA has been housing a Rita’s Water Ice for close to 10 years or more.  Here’s a photo I took in 2009:

This building in San Diego was built in 1931 as the Silverado Ballroom.  It was looking a little ragged when I took this photo in 2014:

I’m happy to say that it got a $1.6 million restoration last year and now has a cheery paint job:
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/feb/17/silverado-ballroom-in-city-heights-reopens/
It reopened earlier this year  [from Google Street View]:

 

This one broke my heart.  I loved this little Art Deco building in New Haven, CT.  I took these photos in 2007:

It had these nice relief panels with an aviation theme:

It was abandoned for years.  So, I shouldn’t have been shocked.  But in 2015, Google Street View shows an apartment building going up on the site.  Crap.

Let’s wrap up this post with a sign.  I’ve been worried about the long abandoned camera store sign in Detroit — fearing that it would just disappear one day.  Here’s what the sign looked like back in 2005 [credit mrehfus at Flickr]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/90791790@N00/5785466/

It had neon originally.  And the flash on top must have had a bulb that flashed.   By my 2011 photo, the sign had been painted over:

And today, as per Google Street View, it’s a relief that the sign is still there.  But it’s a rather odd repurpose.   Glad they didn’t scrap it.  Maybe one day the sign will be adopted by a camera store and repainted.  Although getting around city sign codes to install a sign like this is nearly impossible these days:

I’ve just started going through the SCA Journal Sign Articles companion pages at my site.  So, there will be a lot more signs coming up in the next post.  Stay tuned.

dj