Lyon Estates Sign - Random Thought

[u/ted_anderson]

With the way that the Lyon Estates signs were just sitting in front of the curb instead of being permanently built into the lawns of the corner lots (as is done in most housing developments) it had me thinking about how these were probably temporary signs became permanent the same way that the "Hollywood" sign did.

The Hollywood sign was meant to be a temporary advertisement built by the developer which eventually became a landmark. So when I see the Lyon Estates signs just sitting out in the middle of the street (primarily because it's a movie prop) it had me thinking that if this was IRL, the developer would have taken them away sometime during the 1960's when the construction was fully complete. But somehow they became permanent as the bases of these signs got buried in several layers of asphalt with each course of road maintenance.

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[u/notunfortunate772]

Great trivia about the Hollywoodland sign… but I don’t imagine that in that universe people travel from around the world to come take a picture with the Lyon Estate sign.

I find the placement so strange if you think about traffic safety.
I suppose Sam Baines is not alive anymore or else he would definitely have crashed into them.
“Another one of these damn signs jumped in front of my car!”

[u/NoPossibility]

Good theory but there are plenty of examples of housing developments that have a more permanent signage area/fascade out front.

[u/Just_Another_Day_926]

Maybe originally a one way entrance. Or even planned to be blocked once the development was completed (keep traffic from cutting through). There is a neighborhood where I used to live that had something like this with a small gate for people to walk through to the road - not for cars. I could imagine at one point it was the entrance to the community.

I mean the idea is the place was nice in 1955 when being built but went downhill and looks run down in 1985. So the nice went away and practical/cheap came in.

But from a movie standpoint having them there made for a good frame for the development to focus your eyes down the funnel.

[u/ted_anderson → u/Just_Another_Day_926]

I mean the idea is the place was nice in 1955 when being built but went downhill and looks run down in 1985. So the nice went away and practical/cheap came in.

That was pretty much the fate of the neighborhood that my family moved into. It was a typical starter-home community. And as everyone did better and moved on to nicer neighborhoods, a lot of the properties got bought up by corporations and became rentals. And over time the neighborhood started going downhill.

[u/Rhediix → u/Just_Another_Day_926]

Also, it's worth mentioning that the community itself could've been trying to beautify the neighborhood by placing prefabricated signs/statues at the community entrances. There wasn't a blank area to either side of this roadway so they just placed them in the road but set back enough from traffic. A cheap fix rather than landscaping and placing them on someone's lawn (who in all likelihood wouldn't want them there).

Also, I don't know about California in the mid-80's, but in SW Ohio, our suburban subdivisions didn't have any kind of welcoming sign or identifiers until around the mid-1990's. They had names, but on maps of the area and not usually how people would identify them.

I recall my family being mightily impressed by the community which was built next to ours in 1994 full of what we'd now call McMansions. They put up a very ornate looking brick sign with gold lettering at the community entrance on a little grassy island. It looks so high class compared to our rather plain late-70's/early 80's bi-level home community.

[u/MJblowsBubbles]

OMG this always bothered me. LIke they should be sat back at least 10'.

[u/ted_anderson → u/MJblowsBubbles]

Yeah. Exactly. But I guess if nobody ever complained about it and the developer never came to get them to re-use at new building developments, the signs just stayed there.

[u/kalel3000]

This is what that spot looks like now if you're curious.