Philadelphia’s Neon King Gets a Glowing CastleLongtime neon connoisseur Len Davidson finally has a museum to house his impressive collection.he philosopher Luis de Miranda once wrote that neon carries “the poetry of nights.” It’s a nice sentiment, and one Len Davidson would surely agree with.Davidson was just a twenty-something working at the University of Florida in the 1970s when he and a friend were reminiscing about the old neon signs of their youth. A Philadelphia native, Davidson spoke wistfully of an old Pep Boys’ sign depicting company founders Manny, Jack, and Moe.That conversation sparked a lifelong love of neon for Davidson, first with a short-lived neon-themed restaurant called The Gamery, a converted old dress shop whose ceiling he plastered with the signs. (“I had a ghost of a neon sign in my consciousness from growing up in Philadelphia, a place called Levis Hot Dogs that had a 13-foot neon hot dog out front,” he says. “I used to go there as a kid after watching basketball games with my father.”) Next came an apprenticeship with a neon shop in Gainesville, and now his newly opened Neon Museum of Philadelphia. The premise of the museum is twofold: to dazzle viewers with some 130 light displays, and to provide them with a quasi-history lesson, showing what life was like back when the brightest storefront often had the longest line of customers. Now 74 years old, Davidson doesn’t expect to be running the museum for too long; he’s hoping it can eventually become a non-profit.Read more…
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/neon-sign-museum-philadelphia