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.

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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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