Featured Image Courtesy Thomas Hawk
Saving Historic Signs: Preservation Planning, Advocacy, and Restoration
A Training Program for historic sign advocates, preservation practitioners, and local governments
Join CPF for a deep-dive seminar focusing on the historic signage documentation, advocacy, and conservation.
Historic signs and neon installations are more than advertising: they are works of craftsmanship, character-defining features, and highly visible landmarks that shape the identity of California’s commercial districts, highways, and neighborhoods. Yet these resources are frequently altered, converted to LED, removed during business transitions, or lost before their significance is documented.
This three-hour seminar will examine how historic signs can be identified, evaluated, protected, and restored before they become endangered. Historians, preservation planners, advocates, and restoration specialists will explore the cultural history of neon and commercial signage; methods for surveying and documenting historic signs; strategies for building public and owner support; and approaches to incorporating signs into landmark designations, historic districts, and local preservation programs.
Technical presentations will introduce the materials and components of historic neon signs, common deterioration conditions, and the differences among repair, rehabilitation, restoration, reconstruction, and replication. California case studies—including major neon installations and neighborhood signs—will illustrate how owners, consultants, craftspeople, advocates, and reviewing agencies can balance historic integrity, safety, code requirements, business needs, and long-term maintenance.
Participants will leave with practical tools for recognizing significant signs, starting preservation conversations before a crisis occurs, responding when owners are reluctant to retain an inherited sign, and developing effective documentation, advocacy, planning, and restoration strategies.
Speakers
11:00 AM–11:10 AM | Welcome and Program Introduction
Moderator: Amber Long
11:10 AM–11:35 
AM | Why Historic Signs and Neon Matter
Dydia DeLyser
Dr. Dydia DeLyser is a cultural-historical geographer who researches how neon signs shaped the American landscape. Together with Paul Greenstein, she wrote Neon: A Light History, a concise history of the neon sign beginning at the beginning, and covering scandals, murder, fascists, and forgotten inventors. A full-color, lavishly illustrated electrical bodice ripper, aficionados of neon will find this an indispensable “bible” to the history of their favorite collision of art and commerce.
11:35 AM–12:00 PM | Saving Signs through Survey, Designation, and Rehabilitation
Jen Mermilliod / JMRC
Passionate about historic preservation, Jen Mermilliod exceeds the Secretary of the Interior's Professional Qualifications as both a Historian and as an Architectural Historian. With over 25 years of professional work in southern California, she is thoroughly familiar with the history and development of the region and has extensive experience in the development and management of preservation policy, rehabilitation and restoration design, large-scale surveys, and historic context and designations. Recognized as one of the most consequential local historians of our time by her peers, Jennifer is fluent in regulatory compliance, widely published, and thoroughly engaged in preservation planning. Founder of her own consulting firm, JMRC, on any given day, you might find her presenting at a public hearing, climbing construction scaffolding, or filming on location, and she has had the great fortune of surveying and saving some of southern California’s most meaningful historic neon signs, including the Covina Bowl (Covina), Thunderbird Lodge (Riverside), Farm House Motel (Riverside), and more.
12:00 PM–12:25 PM | From Documentation to Advocacy: The SF Neon Model
Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna, SF Neon / Neon Speaks
Founded by authors, designers, and preservation advocates Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna, SF Neon is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating historic neon signs and the communities they represent. The organization grew out of their award-winning book San Francisco Neon: Survivors and Lost Icons and has become a leading voice for neon preservation in California and beyond. Through walking tours, educational programs, preservation advocacy, technical resources, and the annual Neon Speaks symposium they also initiated, SF Neon works to protect historic signs, support the craftspeople who maintain them, and inspire communities to recognize neon as an important part of their cultural heritage and neighborhood identity.
12:25 PM–12:35 PM | Case Study: Petaluma Chick Sign
Katherine J. Rinehart / Petaluma Signs Project
Katherine J. Rinehart is a dedicated advocate for historic preservation, co-founder of the Petaluma Signs Project, and author of Petaluma: A History in Architecture. After retiring from an 18-year career at the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library, she now dedicates her time to providing historic research and archival organizational services as a consultant. In 2025 Katherine created a new organization—Petaluma Signs Project—dedicated to preserving historic signs that enrich Petaluma’s unique identity, fiscally sponsored by Petalumans of Yesteryear. The Project’s first campaign successfully restored Petaluma’s oldest and perhaps most iconic neon sign, located at the former Poehlmann Hatchery. After reaching its fundraising goal with community donations, the sign was taken down in April, restored, and returned to its perch in June 2026. petalumasignsproject.org
12:45 PM –1:10 PM | Assessing, Conserving, and Restoring Historic Neon
Paul Greenstein and Dydia DeLyser
Paul Greenstein has been designing, making, installing, and restoring neon signs in Los Angeles since 1979. Dr. Dydia DeLyser is a cultural-historical geographer who researches how neon signs shaped the American landscape. Together they wrote Neon: A Light History, a concise history of the neon sign beginning at the beginning, and covering scandals, murder, fascists, and forgotten inventors. A full-color, lavishly illustrated electrical bodice ripper, aficionados of neon will find 
this an indispensable “bible” to the history of their favorite collision of art and commerce.
Paul Greenstein (currently on death row awaiting execution for penning false and flippant autobiographies) has led a checkered existence of highs and lows in the sign business for the past 49 years. Wisely entering the neon sign business at its nadir, Paul has electrocuted himself with aplomb, never looking back and never forwards. While presently employed, Paul looks towards showing his barely visible dim bulb taillight to the rest of the world through a cloud of blue exhaust smoke.
1:10 PM–1:35 PM | Protecting Signs Before They Are Threatened
Moderated discussion with Jen Mermilliod, Randall Ann Homan, Al Barna, Katherine Rinehart, Dydia DeLyser, Paul Greenstein, Molly Iker-Johnson, and Margarita Jerabek
1:35 PM–1:55 PM | Q&A
Audience participation in question and answer session with all speakers
1:55 PM–1:58 PM | Closing Recommendations
Molly Iker-Johnson