For years, neighbors in Fells Point expressed interest in refreshing a sign on the side of a building on South Broadway and Shakespeare Street that reads, “VOTE AGAINST PROHIBITION.”

With extra money from wristband and beer sales at the Fell’s Point Fun Festival, the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point was able to finally make that happen.

The nonprofit organization hired an artist who recently brought the sign back to life.

“It’s just been a true survivor of that era,” said Jeffrey Dewberry, vice president of the preservation society and chair of the festival.

The event started in 1967 as a fundraiser to oppose a project that would have connected Interstate 83 and Interstate 95 and destroyed large parts of the neighborhood.

“That building would’ve been gone if the highway went through — and Baltimore would be a very different place today,” he later added.

Though Maryland became the sixth state to ratify the 18th Amendment, it was the only one that did not pass a version of the Volstead Act to enforce Prohibition, said Michael Walsh, author of the 2017 book, “Baltimore Prohibition: Wet and Dry in the Free State.”

Gov. Albert Ritchie was a “well-known wet who really kind of believed in states’ rights,” Walsh said.

“In Baltimore, overall, one of the big differences is you see that defiance right away,” Walsh said. “From the top down, you had someone in power who was very much for states’ rights.”

Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 until the 21st Amendment was approved through state ratifying conventions.

Before Prohibition, Baltimoreans in 1916 overwhelmingly voted against a referendum to go dry.

The Baltimore Sun and The Evening Sun carried ads almost every day with the slogan, “Vote Against Prohibition.”

One of the ads quotes an unnamed “Baltimore workingman” who declared: “When I am finished a hard day’s work, I want to sit down with my wife and drink my glass of beer, and nobody shall stop me.”

The ad continued, “Here is a true American who appreciates what liberty means. Vote Against Prohibition.”

Though right now it’s a “great mystery,” Dewberry said, the preservation society believes the sign went up between 1916 and 1920. The group has arranged for Matthew Mosca, a consultant on historic paint finishes in Baltimore, to analyze a sample from the sign to date it.

Dewberry said the group has a design review committee that advises the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation.

Clipper City Barber Co. on Thames Street appeared before the committee to receive approval for its sign. Dewberry said he was helping the business with its submission. That’s how he came across the work of Sam Redles, owner and artist at Human Made Signs & Murals.

“It was kind of serendipitous,” Dewberry said.

The preservation society brought her on for the project.

Redles said she carried out what she called a “respectful rehabilitation.”

She looked at the sign, examined how it had weathered and researched the history. She matched colors using photos and modern acrylic paint. And instead of a brush, Redles said, she used rags to give the sign an aged appearance.

While studying curation at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Redles said she put together an exhibit in 2015 with the Baltimore Museum of Industry called, “NOT YET LOST! The Art of Maryland Sign Painters.”

When Redles first looked up close at the sign, she noticed there was red paint all over it.

She said the preservation society found a photo from 1951 in which the sign is not visible.

Lead used to be in paint. Red is one of the colors that fades quicker than others, which is why the sign started to slowly show through over time, Redles said.

She said she worked on the rehabilitation from Nov. 4 through Nov. 9 and brought the sign back to how it looked in 1983. And if the sign ages as she expects, Redles said the refresh should last 10 years.

Redles lives in Upper Fells Point and walks by the sign all the time.

“Being able to work in my own neighborhood, and being part of restoring this bit of history, was really exciting and an honor,” Redles said. “It’s both local history, but it’s also American history.”