AFTER GLOW

KEY HIGHWAY

- Ron Cassie

Whenever Paul Gable looked up at the 120-by-70-foot, neon Domino Sugars sign lighting up the Inner Harbor skyline, he marveled at its unique lettering. “I’m a type-setting geek,” says Gable. So it came as an honor, and a bit of pressure for the perfectionist, when his Baltimore design and manufacturing company was hired to replace the weather-beaten, 70-year-old landmark, which came down amid an outpouring of affection and nostalgia in March. Noting the famous beacon was fabricated by Artkraft Strauss Co., which made many of the classic signs in New York’s Times Square, Gable says he occasionally pictured the original designer putting pencil to grid paper and hand-drawing the one-of-a-kind font. “The lower case ‘g,’ which is 24-feet tall, by itself is a work of art, keeping in mind there was no technology for reproducing an image to scale in those days. It was laid out by hand.”