AntiqueTrader.com Collector Feature
The Holy Grail of
Traffic Signals
One collector’s quest to find and restore
the iconic 1924 Acme traffic signal
Robert D. Rentzer
Broadway, between Third and
Seventh streets. The experiment
If you are a longtime reader of
was successful, and within three
the Antique Trader, you may recall
years, 31 such signals were installed
my two prior articles. One was
throughout L.A.’s central business
titled “Anatomy of a Search,” which
district. In 1923, the Los Angeles
was the history of the Baker Boy
Times reported that the City CounGumball Machine and my odyssey
cil approved purchasing 400 Acme
to locate an original in the hands of
Signals, and by 1924, Acme was ofa still-surviving corporate officer.
ficially adopted as the city’s standard
The other was titled “Stand and Designal, leading to it become a fixture
liver,” which was the history of the
at more than 800 L.A. intersections,
Daisy Air Rifle. Since then, I have
as well as streets in other California
been preoccupied with all sorts of
cities and America.
more mundane activities, but most
The Acme signal was unique
recently, I fulfilled a longtime goal
among all traffic signals, sporting
that involved another quest of a
not only illuminated red and green
much more elusive nature: a 1924
Corning glass lenses with heatAcme traffic signal. But first, a bit
resistant ‘stop’ and ‘go’ lettering
of background.
painted inside, but also innovative
After being born and raised in
stop-and-go semaphore arms, an
Brooklyn, N.Y., I ended up in Los
amber blinking light for the wee
Angeles at the age of 17. I was just
hours of the morning when traffic
a kid then, but I always had the colwas mostly absent, and even a bell
lecting bug, which began when I
to warn of the changing of the lights
saved every edition of the 10-cent
and arms (although the bells were
Mad comics. As I grew into adultdisconnected in 1931, as the clanghood, acquired a family and a home
ing of four signals at an intersection
where I could have a game room, I Inventor Frank J. Husbands of Los Angeles received
was described by some as sounding
began decorating that room with a patent for his “automatic traffic regulator,” which
various collectibles, including the would become the Acme traffic signal. Shown here is like “New Year’s Eve in a boiler factory.”). Sadly, Acme’s success was
two I mentioned above. However, the first page of the 15-page patent.
short lived, as the signals literally
there was one collectible that had
always eluded me: a unique traffic signal that dotted the streets of were going to the birds. Despite a bird spike atop the signals,
malfunctions became a frequent problem due to bird nests being
Los Angeles from the 1920s through the 1950s.
It was back in 1917 that Frank J. Husbands of Los Angeles built inside the hollow area where the semaphore arms came to
received a patent (No. 1-236,441) for what would later become rest for 14 hours a day, from twilight to daybreak.
Acme’s first replacements was the tri-signal “Eagle,” first inknown as the Acme Traffic Signal. In October 1920, L.A. began
to experiment with the signal, installing it at five locations along stalled on Wilshire Boulevard in September 1931. Others soon
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followed. In Acme’s sixth catalogue, published in 1931, a 19-page brochure (see
page 29) extolled the merits of the product
and concluded with a page of operation
and maintenance costs. By the mid-1950s,
all the Acmes were replaced. The last
surviving one, located in the L.A. Civic
Center North Main Street Plaza, at Main
Street and Sunset Boulevard, was removed
by workers during a December 1956 ceremony where Arthur W. Lutz, president of
the L.A. Traffic Commission, arrived with
a pair of policemen dressed for the occasion in old-time uniforms. After stepping
out of a vintage Packard touring car, Lutz
hopped into the back of the workers’ truck
to get a bird’s-eye view of the jack hammering.
What became of the Acmes is a matter
of speculation, although the fate of one is
graphically depicted in a crash scene (below right). As for the others, it is rumored
that the city had them loaded onto a barge
and dumped in the ocean. Of those that
remained, I learned from Ed Tapanes,
who runs a forum for traffic signal collectors (http://www.signalfan.com) that one
surviving and operable Acme, originally
owned by the California Department of
Transportation, was rescued from the
junkyard and given to an employee whose
children rode bikes around it in their yard,
playing traffic games. When he passed
away, it was acquired by his brother-in-law,
who gave it a home in Arizona. Another
is on display at the Smithsonian Institute
in Washington, D.C., and another is on
display at the Deer Park Winery and Automobile Museum in Escondido, Calif. It
holds court amid dozens of vintage autos,
and a trip to the museum is well worth it.
(Make it a point to say “hello” to the owner,
Clark, who is the most gracious of hosts.)
According to an old article written by
retired Los Angeles Police Department
Lt. Max Hurlbert, later republished in the
Los Angeles Times, Hurlbert personally
adopted the signal removed from L.A.’s
North Main Street Plaza in December
1956. There are also three Acmes sitting
outdoors at the Orange Empire Railway
Museum in Perris, Calif. Although restoration recently began after I visited several
times and expressed interest in their fate, it
seems that until then, these few remaining
old faithful guardians of public safety had
been neglected by the folks they previously
protected.
Due to the scarcity of these Acmes,
motion picture studios used replicated
An Acme traffic
signal stands above
a mob scene at the
bus stop at First
Street and Central
Avenue in Los
Angeles.
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Acmes to represent Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s. They
can be seen in such films as “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “Who
Framed Roger Rabbit.” In fact, the now-retired prop master for
Walt Disney had replicated nine Acmes, and of those nine, the
whereabouts of six are known. Two are believed still maintained
by the Disney studios, two are believed owned by the famous
author and collector of antique cars, Clive Cussler. Another
belongs to a collector in New Mexico (mentioned later in this
article) and one had been owned by a collector in Carpinteria,
Calif., which is where my personal story begins.
I wound up being the winning bidder in an online auction
for a Fisk Tire advertising sign. Since the seller was in Carpinteria, only a 65-mile drive away, I arranged to personally
pick up the sign. It was there that I saw what appeared to be
an original Acme traffic signal. The signal was not for sale, but
from that moment on, I was hooked: I had to have an Acme
traffic signal. Little did I know that I was seeking something
the owner of the reproduction had sought for more than a
quarter century, without success. My first naїve step was to do
fruitless searches on eBay and Craigslist. Failing there, I posted
An Acme light guides traffic on U.S. 101 in North Hollywood.
This car crash
scene from the
1930s shows
how many Acme
traffic lights met
their untimely
fates.
Photo courtesy Ed Tapanes
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my want on eBay’s “Saved Searches” list,
where it sat unanswered for almost three
years. I got a belated Christmas gift when,
on Jan. 20, 2009, I received an eBay “saved
search” notice. A “Copy Acme Semaphore
Signal” was up for auction, with a “Buy It
Now” price. Lo and behold, it was the very
one I had seen that was not for sale when I
purchased the Fisk tin sign. It seemed the
signal was going to be sold to fund the purchase of an antique car, and I helped with
that by meeting the seller’s “Buy It Now”
price. We met in Thousand Oaks, Calif.,
halfway between my house and the seller’s,
and loaded the Acme onto my SUV, where
it stuck out a good two feet, leaving me to
fear being struck from behind all the way
home. After I arrived home without incident, I immediately set up the Acme in my
game room and switched it on. Something
wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger
on it. The unit seemed to be operating correctly, red light, green light, Stop arm, Go
arm, amber light and bell, yet something
troubled me and I couldn’t figure out exactly what that was.
The signal simply did not feel right,
and I wondered if I was having a case of
buyer’s remorse. A conversation I had with
a fellow collector, Dale Mark, who owned
the New Mexico reproduction, explained
it all.
“Don’t you remember, Bob, from when
you saw the original in operation as a kid?
The arms activated at the same time, and
crossed each other, one on the way up and
one on the way down. The repro doesn’t do
that,” he said.
With that description, I realized the
flaw in the reproduction was that one
semaphore arm would not deploy from its
housing until the other came to rest in that
The sign protested STOP,
but that plea was ignored by
workers charged with removing
Los Angeles’ last working Acme
stoplight in the L.A. Civic Center
North Main Street Plaza, at Main
Street and Sunset Boulevard
in December 1956. During a
removal ceremony, Arthur W.
Lutz, president of the L.A. Traffic
Commission hopped into the
back of the workers’ truck to get
a bird’s-eye view of the task.
housing, creating a visual conflict with my
subconscious memory of the Acme in action. The reason for this discrepancy was
easily understood upon a close inspection
of the mechanism powering the reproduction. It was an overly simplistic chain and
notched cam device that contacted a micro
switch that activated one semaphore arm
at a time, preventing the semaphore arms
from crossing during the change of lights
and allowing only one arm to be deployed
after the other came to rest.
With an understanding of what troubled
me about the reproduction, I settled in to
enjoy it, but as a perfectionist, I remained
bothered by this inconsistency. Then, fate
intervened. Without thinking, I had forgot-
ten to remove my Acme want ad on the
eBay “Saved Searches” list and just three
weeks after I had purchased the reproduction I got an alert from eBay telling me
an original Acme was up for grabs. It was
being offered by 20th Century Props in
North Hollywood, just 14 miles from my
house. Trouble was, I could not run to see
it because, at that exact moment, my wife
and I were 2,700 miles away on a vacation
in Jamaica. In desperation I called my fiend
in New Mexico and he calmed me down ...
sort of.
He told me that he knew for a fact that
the prop house had four Acmes and likely
would be putting up the other three, one at
a time. He also told me he believed that the
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condition of each would be prove to be
progressively better, with those in the
poorest condition being offered first.
So, feeling much like a kid who can
hardly refrain from tearing the wrappings off the gift under the tree that
says, “Do Not Open ’Til Christmas,”
I resisted temptation and allowed
the Acme to be sold without placing
any bid on it ... GULP !
Then, sure enough, soon after
the first sold, the second turned up
on eBay. This time, however, I was
home from vacation, so, after waiting to see what the second Acme
sold for on eBay, I rushed over to
20th Century Props to pay the
seller a visit. The owner, Harvey,
greeted me warmly and took me
on a tour of his 200,000-squarefoot facility, crammed full of
rare items ranging from an
original Howard Hughes desk
that appeared in the movie
“Aviator” to alien bodies and
everything in between. Naturally, he saved the Acmes for
last. The two remaining, each in
elongated wooden crates, were
on a high shelf, which he had a
worker retrieve with a forklift.
As the screws were removed and
the lid of the first crate was about
to be slid open, I had a flashback
to the scene from “Raiders of The
Lost Ark,” where the Ark of the
Covenant was being opened (probably due to my having been immersed in movie memorabilia), so I
shut my eyes. Once I dared to open
them, I must have resembled Lord
Carnarvon when he first gazed upon
King Tut’s mask. Too late for a poker
face. I knew I just allowed Harvey to
hook me. He showed me the last of the
remaining Acmes and invited me to his
office. I knew he was in the process of
reeling me in.
After what seemed like an eternity talking about things I can’t remember, all I do
recall is that Harvey and I shook hands on
a deal. The fourth Acme would not go up
for auction, and it would be sold to me for
an agreed price over and above what the
last one on auction would bring. Now my
task was to assure my wife that my
game room would not be turned
into a traffic intersection and would
not play host to two Acmes. So, while
watching the auction that was going to
help set my signal’s price — and while
seeing that figure climb to frightening
heights — I set about finding a buyer
for my reproduction. After all, I’d need
that money to help defray the cost of
the “real” Acme I was in line to own. My
search for a buyer ended quickly when
the owner of the famous Magic Castle
in Hollywood made my reproduction
Acme disappear into his vehicle. With
great relief, I informed my wife that I had
recovered the entire purchase price of the
reproduction and could apply that to the
cost of the original I would be acquiring.
When Harvey finally sold the third
Acme on eBay, I probably broke a land
speed record in driving to his business to
claim my prize. It went without a hitch.
Harvey was a man of his word, and before
I knew it, I was on the way home with the
crated Acme partly protruding from the
open tailgate of my SUV, once again fearing
at every stop that I’d be hit from behind. I
finally made it home with the Acme intact.
But, of course, it did not stay that way, since
it needed to be completely disassembled
for a complete restoration project that began the moment I got the Acme out of its
crate. The date was March 25, 2009.
■
Robert Rentzer started his career as a
television actor under the name Bob Dennis
and later joined Broadway productions. While
raising a family, he launched a successful law
career and formerly served as a deputy district
attorney and prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Now in private practice, Rentzer is credited
with taking on high profile cases, including
representing Rodney King and participating
in both the Los Angeles and Las Vegas O.J.
Simpson cases. Rentzer is also an author
whose latest book stands ready and waiting
for a publisher. He may be contacted via his
website, www.lawcal.com.
Shown above is the
cover from the 1931
Acme Catalogue
and a page
showing the unit’s
estimated operation
maintenance cost.
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