When you arrive at Tucson’s Ignite Sign Art Museum, it’s easy to feel like a kid at a carnival.
Colorful neon signs, full of whimsy, nostalgia, history, fond memories and love take over the grounds. They invite visitors of all ages to feel the magic that bright, colorful writing and twinkling bulbs bigger than a grown man’s fists that once drew passersby into local businesses. Until they didn’t.
Pretty soon, these decades-old signs meant to be tossed became stars again at Jude Cook’s historical paradise, bringing days of Tucson’s past back to life, in all of its neon glory. You almost expect to be given cotton candy when you walk in the door and smell buttery popcorn lingering through the air.
Not anymore.
More than a week after a fire ripped through Cook’s museum, it is instead filled with burnt artifacts and the thick smell of smoke from a blaze that charred memories and a collection Cook spent 50 years accumulating.
Up to 13,000 items — ranging from salt and pepper shakers to one-of-a-kind clocks — and the entire gift shop at Tucson’s Ignite Sign Museum went up in flames earlier this month.
About 12,000 to 13,000 items, ranging from small salt and pepper shakers to one-of-a-kind clocks, antique thermometers and the museum’s entire gift shop went up in flames.
Some items are impossible to replace.
“Some of this stuff I’ve never seen another example of,” Cook said Friday afternoon as a fire inspector made his way across the property near East Broadway and South Plumer Avenue.
In one room and out the other, the inspector’s feet sloshing on the wet soot beneath him. No cause for the fire has yet been determined.
‘I don’t know that I can do it’
Cook looks around, unable to tell exactly what he’s lost. He picks up a black piece of metal from the ground, recognizing it before tossing it back into the pile beneath him.
“My favorite sign? It’s sitting on a pole over there,” he says gesturing toward a soot-covered pile. “It’s not my favorite sign anymore.”
In fact, the fire changed quite a few things.
A Ronald McDonald statue — the one where the smiling clown once sat on a bench greeting customers outside coming into the fast-food restaurants — is entirely charred. While Ronald McDonald managed to retained his shape, it’s a terribly frightening sight, wel- suited for Halloween season.
Are some of these items still around to replace? Sure, Cook says. But, they are probably too highly priced to purchase anew.
Clocks he bought for $500 have gone to auction and sold for five times as much as he originally paid.
“Everything is going to be priced so high, that I don’t know that I can do it,” Cook said, shaking his head in dismay.
Cook’s hands are perpetually covered in soot, his phone constantly ringing as he deals with calls from his insurance carrier and well-wishers.
He’s avoided looking at photos in an attempt to avoid thinking about the enormity of the loss. Instead, Cook says, he tries to focus on figuring out how the museum will move forward.
Jude Cook, owner of Ignite Sign Art Museum at 331 South Olsen Avenue, says he has avoided looking at photos in an attempt to avoid thinking about the massive loss from last week’s fire.
Thankfully, Cook said, the museum’s large exhibits — giant, colorful neon signs, once landmarks across the Old Pueblo — were saved, because they were stored outdoors and in a different warehouse.
That includes his biggest display, an iconic Arby’s restaurant sombrero that is nearly as large as his building, a massive Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket and the No-Tell Motel sign.
“There’s a connection, a story, and it’s different for everybody,” Cook said. He’s not wrong.
Whether it’s an old music venue, car shop, restaurant, hotel or other building that once advertised with bright neon to grab the attention of passersby. Signs that outlasted their usefulness and were likely bound for the trash found their way to Cook’s museum.
Cook and his small crew restore the signs (often to the most original design) and keep them on display. Accompanying the signs are pictures of them in their heyday, with a brief history about how they ended up in the lot. Cook loves their history, and hearing visitors ooh and ah as they share their own memories.
“Remember this?”
“Remember that?”
“Remember when grandma used to take us there?”
It’s a feeling that reminds him just how much these iconic signs resonate with people and make a city what it is.
‘I think we’ll survive this’
“Neon signs define a city,” he said. “They give you point of references.”
Cook said he’s put up 12 neon signs in a square mile area and helped change the city’s historic code to allow the signs to be taken down, restored, and put back up.
“That led to about 28 restorations that I’ve done in the city.”
He can rattle each one off like the names of his own children, taking pride in each piece.
So, while the museum is closed, Cook’s work is still easy to see. Drive through the city, spot a beautiful neon sign, and you can almost bet Cook had his hands on it at some point ... right down to the No-Tel Motel sign.
Cook calls the sign that lived along North Oracle and West Grant roads as a beacon to Tucson’s seedier side “tacky.” But, Cooks adds, the no-frills No-Tel sign has been a favorite for many museum visitors.
Jude Cook shows parts of his collection left nearly untouched because a recent fire did not spread to the separate warehouse on the property near East Broadway and South Plumer Avenue.
“I had 101 people here last Saturday because of that thing. It’s the best marketing I’ve ever done.”
“The stories are what make this place, and that’s why I think we’ll survive this (fire),” Cook said.
Clean-up will be long, stinky and arduous.
Cook needs special volunteers to handle the neon and equipment, but people from other online neon communities have come out of the woodwork with offers to help. It’s something Cook is eager to get started on.
“We’ve made a heck of a dent in our neon inventory in this city,” Cook said, having restored the Riviera sign, the Golden Pins Bowling Alley, the neon Miracle Mile signs, the La Hacienda sign, Hotel Congress additions.
The list goes on.
And so will Cook’s passion for keeping a bit of Tucson history alive.
