The signs, as AI reproductions. Tap one for its page, photos of the originals and the record.
POSITIVELY NO TINTING OR DYEING PERMITTED IN THESE MACHINES!
That’s the small print under DON’T DYE HERE, below a cartoon undertaker in a top hat. Nobody writes that sentence, with the exclamation point, unless somebody already did it. Inferred
The coin laundry was still young. The first self-service washateria opened in Fort Worth, Texas on 18 April 1934: four electric washers, rented by the hour, and an attendant always on duty. Westinghouse registered the word Laundromat as a trademark in 1947. By 1950 there were about 4,000 self-service stores in the country. Documented
Then the attendant went home. The first unattended, 24-hour stores opened in the late 1940s; Nelson Puett of Austin, Texas is usually credited with the first. Documented A store with nobody in it costs less to run. It is also a room full of strangers and expensive machines, open all night, with nobody there to say no.
And people kept coming. In 1959 a home washer cost about $210, roughly a hundred hours of work at the average wage. Documented Plenty of families still carried the laundry down the block. Mine was still doing it on 20th Avenue in Bensonhurst decades later.
So the rules went on the wall
Not on an index card taped to a dryer. On a panel about 18 inches wide and 48 tall, silk-screened enamel on Marlite, framed in stainless steel, with a cartoon on top. Documented
- DID YOU SAY CHANGE? Change machines are empty from midnight til 6 a.m.
- CAREFUL NOW! Washer door is automatically locked. It cannot be opened until washing cycle is completed.
- WE’RE SORRY If your machine fails to operate place an out of order sign on machine. Leave your name and address for refund.
- WE’RE NOT RESPONSIBLE We can assume no responsibility for damage, loss or theft of property. Please be here to remove articles when finished.
- THIS COULD BE YOU Anyone who defaces, damages or destroys property on these premises will be prosecuted!
Read them in order and they are a night shift with nobody on it: the change runs out at midnight, a machine eats your coins, a door won’t open, somebody walks off with your shirts, somebody kicks the dryer. Each sign is an argument the owner didn’t want to have in person. The cartoon was there to take the edge off. Inferred
Sold by mail from Queens
Schorr Sign Service, a shop on Myrtle Avenue in Glendale, Queens, registered sixteen of these designs with the Copyright Office in 1960 and 1961 under the name Laundesigns, and sold them through ads in the coin laundry trade press from 1961 to 1963. Documented An owner in Felton, California or Trumansburg, New York could order a wall of house rules with a joke attached and never meet the man who made them.
The trade was organizing at the same time. The National Automatic Laundry and Cleaning Council, today the Coin Laundry Association, was founded in Chicago in 1961. Documented In Manhattan, the first all-Wascomat laundromat opened in 1960, by the company’s own account.
Seven of the signs were still on the wall at Rob’s Stop ‘N’ Wash on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope when someone photographed them in 2008. BE AN ANGEL was one of them. Help us keep this place clean and appealing. Please put refuse in waste baskets.
Sources
- First washateria, Fort Worth, 1934: Fox News, This Day in History. American Coin-Op notes sources disagree between Texas and Indiana.
- Laundromat trademark 1947, unattended stores, about 4,000 stores by 1950: American Coin-Op, The laundry industry turns 73.
- Washer price and hours of work, 1959: Foundation for Economic Education.
- Coin Laundry Association founding, 1961: American Coin-Op (one other source says 1960).
- First all-Wascomat laundromat, Manhattan, 1960: Laundrylux company history.
- Sign sizes, materials, registrations and ads: see the Sign Catalog and Sources.