MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward is a booming arts & entertainment district, but while walking among the packed restaurants and modern shops, you’ll also find hints of its past.
Aging hand-painted billboards from over 100 years ago are scattered across the Third Ward, referred to as ghost signs. One of these ghost signs is just outside the building home to Milwaukee marketing agency, Hoffman York.
“Walking out of the Hoffman York building, I noticed this one little sign at Monarch,” Hoffman York Executive Creative Director Mike Rowe told Wisconsin’s Midday News. “I would look at it in different lighting. I would look at it in the morning, I would look at it at night, and I just couldn’t figure it out.”
This sparked an idea in Rowe’s mind: What if you could use augmented reality to bring these ghost signs back to life?
Thanks to protection from the historic registry, buildings with ghost signs featured on them must remain in their current form. Augmented reality can bring them back to life by projecting the original billboards onto the buildings for residents and visitors to see.
“Augmented History” is a walking tour that allows users to point their smartphone or tablet at buildings around Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward to see in real-time what it looked like over 100 years ago.
In order for this idea to come to fruition, a lot of research was needed to piece together the ghost signs and bring them back to their former glory.
The Milwaukee County Historical Society, the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Milwaukee Public Library all lent a hand to Rowe and Hoffman York in their research of Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward.
“The reception I got was really wonderful,” said Rowe. “They were so friendly and helpful. I had been slogging for months trying to find some photos of these old buildings so (their help) got me re-energized and helped me go through this.”
A relentless process of digging through old photos of the Third Ward eventually led to discoveries of exactly what the ghost signs used to look like and say.
“Every time you would discover one, it was so thrilling because it took so long to find these,” Rowe told Wisconsin’s Midday News.
From there, the ghost signs were able to be re-created from the reference photos. Head to augmentedhistory.org to learn more and to try out the tour for yourself.
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