Once you start noticing them, you can’t stop.
Ghost signs — faded, hand-painted advertisements from years past — can be spotted on the exteriors of brick buildings. The century-old traces of paint carry a sense of nostalgia in many Boston neighborhoods.
Now two brothers, muralists and sign painters from North Carolina, are breathing new life into a ghost sign on a building in Boston’s West End, one of the last standing after the neighborhood was largely demolished in the 1960s.
On a recent afternoon, Jack and Eli Williams stood on a boom lift at 90 Canal St., brushes and a can of white paint in hand. The pair have been working on restoring the historic Holt & Bugbee lumber company sign for over a week, letter by letter.
“We will take the time to not cover up the paint, but go in and paint up to each individual line,” Jack Williams said. “So instead of starting with a blank canvas, you’re building it back from what’s already there.”
Starting around 7 a.m., the brothers strapped into their yellow safety harnesses. High above the sidewalk, they carefully painted the letters and then the negative space around them, alternating between green and white.
The painting process is just as much a part of restoring history as the finished sign itself, said Jack Williams.
“By doing everything by hand how it was done back in the 1890s, you’re ensuring that you’re still getting these human characteristics in the letters,” he said. “A lot of these signs are really wonky. But that’s how they originally work. And I think that there’s beauty in the fact that it was made by a person. Some may call them mistakes, but they add to the elegance of the hand-painted sign.”
Holt & Bugbee, a family-owned business, celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. The enormous advertisement has been painted on the Wakefield building since the 1800s, when the company was still based in Boston.
Like many other businesses, Holt & Bugbee got pushed out of the West End’s Bulfinch Triangle and into the suburbs during the urban renewal efforts of the 1960s. The company is now based in Tewksbury.
The Williams brothers are collaborating with the West End Museum and the Holt & Bugbee Foundation, which is financing the $51,000 project.
Cities as old as Boston and Cambridge have many ghost signs, from the Quaker Oats sign in Cambridge to the 10 cent cigar advertisement near Haymarket.
Before the web and social media, painted advertisements were an affordable and lasting way for companies to get recognition. These early signs kept it simple: the name of the business, carved in wood or painted in bold lettering, along with a short description of their goods and services.
Painted advertisements had to be massive so they could be read from far away. The Quaker Oats sign in Cambridge spans across a wall of the five-story building on Main Street.
Originally, the way to see these “brick ads” was in person, but today many have been preserved on camera in what is commonly referred to as ghost sign hunting.
“It’s a museum without walls,” said Brian Egdahl, the ad hoc chair of restoration at the West End Museum. “You’re taking the history out of the archives and putting it on the street where people live and work.”
The Williams brothers arrived in Boston on April 26 for their first out-of-state ghost sign restoration. The pair plan on finishing the sign, which covers the upper portion of the building’s back wall, this month.
Jack Williams, 27, and Eli Williams, 23, painted their first ghost sign, a Pepsi bottle, in their hometown of Albemarle, N.C., for a school project in 2015.
“The funny part was our mom made a joke. She was like, ‘Maybe one day you guys do this for a job,’” Jack Williams said. “And when you say that to a 15-year-old and a seventh-grader, you’re like, ‘Yeah, OK, whatever.’ But here we are.“
The museum and Holt & Bugbee got in touch with the brothers in September, thanks to Egdahl, 39, who has lived across from the faded sign since 2024.
“I thought it was a neat opportunity to bridge the gap of the historic West End and a modern development like the Verizon Tower, which is relatively new, in the background,” Egdahl said. “Wakefield Building was built in 1871. It survived the urban renewal that cleared much of the West End. It’s the last man standing of the furniture district.”
Jack Williams said his favorite part of bringing a piece of history back to life is “getting to know the people who have memories associated with the signs.”
In the weeks leading up to the project, the Williams brothers toured the Tewksbury Holt & Bugbee plant together with Ben Pierce, 42, head of the Holt & Bugbee Foundation. Pierce is part of the sixth generation of the Pierce family to work at the company.
“I don’t think there was a single person he walked by who he didn’t shake their hand, knew their name, and people were happy to see him,” Jack Williams said. ”It’s just been really cool seeing such a large business care about their employees so much."
Pierce said the sign restoration was a way for Holt & Bugbee “to make their mark in the city again.”
While many residents have shown enthusiasm about the project, he has seen online discourse about the company painting over history rather than restoring it. He sees it differently.
“This is going to go away if we don’t do anything, you know?” Pierce said. “So we might as well restore because the alternative is just to not have anything in 10 years. They also paint Paul Revere’s house to keep it looking like it did back in the 1700s.”
Egdahl, who is also director at West End Productions, a boutique media and preservation house, has been sharing the brothers’ restoration process on Instagram and plans on making a documentary to “preserve the moment forever.”
“[Holt & Bugbee has] a 200-year story and it’s reaching back into the Bulfinch triangle. I don’t know how many other companies with signs can say the same,” he said.
“There are some beautiful signs. There’s some right on Friend Street in the Bulfinch Triangle. How those get restored is a challenge in and of itself. Maybe we are starting a movement.”
Hannah Goeke can be reached at hannah.goeke@globe.com.