A couple weeks of chilly midday walks, two archive visits, and 139 geo-located photos. In late December, I had walked a large portion of Old Strathcona looking for old fixtures, and by mid-January, I made my first visit to the City archives. This final post contains all that I currently have to say about old house numbers in Edmonton.

What we know from the streets

If you walk through any pre-war neighbourhood in Edmonton, you'll eventually start to see a particular type of foil-and-glass house number repeated over and over and over - but only on the oldest houses. There are plenty of subtle stylistic differences between them, but they're all made of shiny silver foil pressed underneath a scalloped glass plate. This strongly implies some kind of common origin.

Here's a complete map showing every single one that I've documented to date.

When I did a similar project in Regina, I discovered that old houses in that city were originally issued white-on-blue enamel number signs, which are totally absent from Edmonton. (In the other direction, I spotted one scalloped foil-and-glass number plate in Regina, but I didn't think to get a photo of it!!)

So we know these signs were widespread, we know their style varies regionally, and we know from common sense that addresses are usually regulated in some capacity by the local government. But we don't have all the answers about where they came from. Manufactured in-house? Preferred contractor?

Luckily, the City of Edmonton Archives exist, and (at least nominally) contain plenty of leads.

What we know from the Archives

Edmonton adopted its modern addressing system in 1914, shortly after the annexation of neighbouring Strathcona. If we dig up historical addressing bylaws, some key language strongly implies that foil-and-glass house numbers were subsidized by the city (for fifty cents!) between 1928 and 1955, explaining why one style is so consistently found everywhere. The old bylaw text also confirms that homeowners were always free to improvise their own numbers, so we should NOT expect to see one on every single old house in the city.

I made a second visit to the Archives later in January, but it was mostly a bust. I requested to see every single contract and piece of correspondence related to house numbers or sign shops from the 1920s to the 1950s. Smart, right? My hands were almost trembling as I opened up a letter from October 1927 sent to the Commissioners by the city's oldest sign shop. Surely this would be the original document where a major corporate player lobbied for what would become the 1928 house numbering bylaw!

Nope... Clyde A. Hook was just complaining to the authorities about the road in front of his storefront being crappy. Plus ça change.

I also found some Bylaws Committee correspondence from 1947, complaining that the placing of numbers on houses has "no uniformity" and that the use of luminous paint is "in an experimental stage". I thought I would be digging up these archival sources so I wouldn't have to make vague assumptions based on tone, but from the sound of this letter, the City was still expected to have significant procurement power over house numbers in this era.

By this time, foiled glass was already long out of fashion, and a big municipal contract was very possibly the only thing keeping the guy who made them from retiring. It's not surprising that the last straw may have been new postwar technologies coming on the scene - although we know from living in the future that advanced retro-reflective materials fill the niche today that Mayor Ainlay expected to see occupied by phosphorescent paint.

I was also able to view the original copy of one interesting item, an old photo showing (very incidentally) an old number plate in the wild.

It turns out the definition on these old film cameras is very good in the proper lighting!

As a final Hail Mary, the Archives also had two copies of Edmonton's 1930s building code, something which is no longer a municipal matter anywhere outside Vancouver. The old Code books were pretty funny (asbestos curtains!) but number plates are not structural elements, nor are they required for safety. No mention of addressing could be turned up.

Key street finds

What on earth motivated me to get so systematic with this project? Sometimes, you just come across a unique item that challenges your basic assumptions, and it makes the hunt much more interesting.

Visiting the City Archives was helpful, but I found no specification or tender proving that the City ever made any direct decisions about the form and function of these numbers. So, although they clearly are a standard, it's an informal one. The exact relationship between the City and its preferred contractor(s) must be deduced by other means.

Perhaps some of the most unusual items in my historic inventory will provide clues...

Extra Verbose

These were the first street finds that made me wonder how standardized these plates really were. By craftsmanship these are clearly related to their shorter brethren - but what's with the whole street number tacked onto the end?? Did ratepayers have the option of paying more than fifty cents to make their sign look more appealing?

Out of 139 numbers, these are the only two of their kind, so more data is not forthcoming. Their respective build years are 1950 and 1960.

Double Decker

Another completely unique sign, here the street number occupies a whole second line. This is on a 1930 build.

Having survived in fairly good condition, this sign also betrays its layered construction: you can see that the maker was economical with the textured foil and only applied small rectangles of it where needed.

Cinderella Sign

Stamp collectors have a whimsical name for any stamp-like object that lacks government authorization: a "cinderella". This strangely familiar "No Agents" sign is displayed on a 1949 low-rise apartment building.

Bingo!! Sometimes I'm not the fastest thinker. The previous few mutant signs caught my attention, but I figured that they still could have fit into some kind of municipal code - maybe the City was just incoherent, and changed its requirements at random times over the years. This is the object that made me realize that private sign shops played a leading role in establishing Edmonton's house number standard.

Its construction and appearance are identical to dozens of number plates I photographed all around the city, but there is no reason why the City of Edmonton would have any financial stake in installing a "No Agents" sign on a private residence. Here is direct proof that layered foil and glass were a house specialty of at least one Edmonton sign shop, and they made them in this fashion whenever they felt like it.

So far, this is the only object of its kind that I've been able to locate, but any surviving Edmonton sign from the 1950s could fit the bill - indoors or outdoors! Keep your eyes peeled!!

Unbalanced

This ugly thing appears to be a simple misprint: its top margin is way too thick. It certainly merits inclusion in my rogue's gallery of weird, unique signs, but I mostly just wonder why it still got produced like this. I suspect it was a leftover piece of glass, close enough to spec that removing the thin upper edge would have risked compromising the remainder.

A basic typology

Now that you've seen the very weirdest and most memorable of the bunch, here's how I classified the rest. With 139 photographs in total, I count 7 reasonably distinctive categories containing at least 2 self-similar plates.

Plain (64 plates)

The largest category is also the most questionable. Slightly less than half of my observed plates are broadly regular.

Because each one of these signs is hand-made, there's a lot of variation inside this category. It's possible to try and subdivide it further, but unlike in Regina where we can see a fluid painter's hand at work, here we're dealing with blade-cut pieces of foil pressed directly onto the glass. This is a finicky, geometric process and I am much less confident about reading an individual artisan's craft into any particular typographic quirk.

With each of these plates being a fully bespoke object, we see slightly different dimensions and aspect ratios being employed across the run. Edmonton's random mix of 4- and 5-digit address numbers doesn't make things any more consistent.

In a perfect world, this category could be further subdivided using absolute measurements and close analysis of the foil texture of every plate. In practice, many plates are in inaccessible locations, and they've degraded into such a state that it's difficult to reconstruct exactly how they might have appeared when new.

Deluxe (28 plates)

These plates make up the largest and most obvious subcategory: they all have attractive red trim (sometimes faded) and a two-tone finish on each number. Both of these steps require a deft hand with a knife and add additional manufacturing complexity. It's difficult to imagine these being sold for exactly the same price as their plain brethren.

Worth noting: 11506 has a little black pip on each of its corners, making the trim effect even more decorative. I haven't observed this complication anywhere else in Edmonton.

Serif (22 plates)

Flash forward: suddenly these digits are looking very regular indeed. Forget about the labourious hand-cutting process, our sign shop has switched over to a set of regular stencils and an airbrush. This is newer technology, matching the WWII-era build years that these are generally screwed onto.

Although the stencils must have saved a lot of work, there is one major downside with these plates: they just haven't held up as well. The paint tends to flake off the crumpled foil surface, and this style category can become nearly unreadable in a way that the more traditional number plates never do. (Survivorship bias! It's also possible that the traditional plates fail catastrophically rather than gradually.)

Curved Sides (6 plates)

These seem to correlate with older tax years and are breaking down in an unusual way: is that paper inside 11008? They're so trashed that I haven't been able to reverse-engineer their exact manufacture. 10934 holds the odd distinction of having disintegrated in the most colourful way of any plate I have a photo of.

Obnoxiously, 5 out of these 6 have a fairly distinctive 2-short 5-long scalloping pattern... but of course, there's an odd one out. The curved sides are otherwise such a unifying design element!! Keep your secrets!!

Notched (6 plates)

These plates all have distinctive notched "1"s and a finely crumpled texture. Curves are hard to produce with a knife: the number forms are very inconsistent.

It took me a bit of thought to realize that 9539 also belonged in this set, but luckily we can compare the 5 to 11541.

New (3 plates)

This style really annoys me. It's unique in its construction: no scallops. The aluminum bracket is a distinctively more modern feature than you see on all the other number plates. It just looks like you would expect to find it at the end of the run. But the tax years don't back me up on the chronology: these three houses are from 1911, 1920, and 1930.

Even more strangely, two of these are right next door to each other!!

Old Serif (2 plates)

As we reach the "categories" that have no more than two members, things necessarily start to get a little more spurious. I'm not sure that they are genetically related, but these two signs both share an unusual serifed "1" that doesn't match the rest of the population at all.

Despite their similar typography, 10806 is crumbling in a way that indicates the foil was spray-painted using a stencil, while 11724 appears to have been painted directly onto the glass in a more conventional manner.

D.I.Y. (9 plates)

A number of plates have been inexpertly repaired over the years, as their layered construction is tantalizingly able to be taken apart by an amateur. These oddballs, in addition to being a little entertaining, often provide valuable insight about how these plates were fabricated by their original manufacturer. 9941 cleverly uses modern retro-reflective material, while I suspect that 10642 is a wartime Serif plate whose original (faulty) ink was carefully blown off.

There are a few other borderline objects that might have been inspired by an original number plate, but here I only include those where it's obvious that some original hardware has been retained. Although the scalloped glass-bracket connection on these plates always looks a bit insubstantial to me, it is clearly a fairly robust and repairable arrangement that's able to survive being opened up more than once.

And one really unique one

This plate doesn't fit the rest at all, but I include it here because of its glass construction, familiar dimensions, and the fact that it is attached to a 1923 house. Somehow, it reminds me of a bank.

Category geography

Having delineated all these categories, is there any discernible spatial trend to them?

As far as I can tell, no... but it's wonderful that we checked! That's science, baby.

Interviews and the Aftermarket

In a very informal fashion, I personally spoke to two operators in Edmonton who specialize in demolition and architectural salvage, ideally hoping that they might have one of these things sitting in the back room. Both were very familiar with what I was inquiring after.

One was VERY enthusiastic about my project to document these old numbers, promised to take down my contact information for the next time they came across one, and offered to promote any kind of replica that I would be able to manufacture.

The other confessed to habitually throwing these old plates away, as they are invariably very degraded. (Painful as it is to hear, this is true. Only a handful of my 139 photos represent a condition that I would call presentable.)

Slightly disappointing, but it only took a couple months of similar work in Regina to stumble across an original number plate for sale at an antique mall in a different city. I'll keep looking!

Chronology and data science

Let's put all the pieces together, and prepare for the day I'm back in Edmonton and I'm bored enough to try and complete my inventory.

Our historic bylaws and our street observations generally agree that these number plates are not found on anything built after the mid-50s, so our area of interest can easily be winnowed down to territory controlled by the City of Edmonton in that era:

If we want to systematically look for old municipal-issued fixtures, we'll want to use City tax records to find where old buildings exist inside this area. The pre-1955 map looks like this:

Post-war suburbanization explosively changed the form of almost every Canadian city. If we just filter out addresses built between 1945 and 1955, we find that most of the city's pre-1955 footprint was built in a single decade:

These post-war neighbourhoods might contain the thing I'm looking for, but we'd expect the pickings to be slimmer, and with larger lot sizes these areas are less convenient to walk through. So, on a practical level, I concentrated my search to Edmonton's much smaller stock of pre-1945 architecture. This is the familiar shape of "old" Edmonton as it appeared on maps for a few decades, except for the core, where almost all old buildings have been obliterated by redevelopment.

I was able to personally survey about 50% of these hot-spots. Not bad for a personal project that absolutely nobody asked me to do! On my next trip into the city, I would really like to walk through Highlands and Westmount, two relatively isolated old regions that were built out before the war.

Building age chronology

Let's take a look at how the ages of buildings with old number plates compare to the ages of all buildings in our study area:

As in Regina, we see that the peaks and troughs agree pretty closely... until we reach a sharp cut-off. Unlike in Regina, there was much more development in the core area in the 40s and 50s. This histogram strongly suggests that our number plates stopped being issued in the mid-1950s.

In Regina, old number plates are sometimes re-used on new buildings, presumably because owners or contractors recognize their heritage value. In Edmonton, I found one very obvious infill where the old number was proudly retained, as well as a couple conspicuously new exteriors where the City thinks that the underlying structure is original. But overall, I would say that Regina beats Edmonton when it comes to examples of conscious preservation. Artsy Strathcona is simply higher-income and more intensively redeveloped than Regina's Cathedral is.

The difference might also come down to the physical materials: Regina number plates are solid metal and can survive a drop, Edmonton number plates are glass and are frequently seen cracked. (This hasn't prevented a couple home-owners from leaving theirs precariously balanced on top of a railing. Yikes!)

Category chronology

Are there any temporal trends that connect the different plate categories?

It's frustratingly hard to tell. Out of our three biggest categories, the observation I'm most confident making is that the Deluxe category is scattered much more evenly throughout our period of interest. The Plain and Serif categories are both disproportionately present in the war years, corresponding to a wartime and postwar building boom that we know was happening across the whole city.

I suspect that a bit more analytical work could probably untangle a Plain sub-category uniquely constrained to the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, see my previous observation about the difficulty of analyzing the craftsmanship behind these badly degraded objects.

Conclusion

Edmonton has an original style of house number plate that is distinctively tied to the city's early history, affixed onto a variety of buildings between 1928 and 1955. Although the city was directly involved with distributing them for below cost, no surviving documents could be located dealing the exact nature of the business relationship between the municipality and any of its established local sign shops. Their foil-and-glass construction represents a "house style" that was common to one or more private artisans in the first half of the 20th century.

Based on an inventory of 139 geo-located photographs, these plates can be arranged into 7 stylistic categories. Some of these appear to be tied to particular age ranges, either because of statistical patterns in the construction year of their host buildings, or because their construction reflects different stages of technological advancement. Efforts to replicate some of these original methods of manufacture are currently underway.

With a few weeks to kill, a data science background, and a decent pair of boots, you too can completely fail to include any do-nothing days in your Christmas vacation plans.