Baltimore is home to many ghosts of the past, and you don’t have to trek to a graveyard to see them. Ghost signs, the faint, hand-painted advertising signs on walls and brick buildings, are all over the place.

We recently spoke with Lashelle Bynum, a ghost sign aficionado, who has spent the last couple of decades photographing them, about her affinity for what she calls her “babies.”

And even though parents will never admit that they have a favorite child or children, Bynum shared a few of hers here below.

The Stafford Hotel

As an admirer of Hollywood’s glitz, glam and stars, it’s no surprise that one of Bynum’s favorites is the former Stafford Hotel.

“It just has this elegance about it. It’s just swank,” Bynum said. The sign makes her wish she could stay at the hotel now.

The building is now an apartment building called the Stafford Apartments, but it once welcomed high-profile people visiting Baltimore. Bynum admires the green undertone of the sign and thinks the elegant cursive matches the vibe of the hotel.

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Location:

716 Washington Place

Baltimore, MD 21201

McCormick & Liembach

You’ll want to go into the grassy area between a small church and a house to see this one. Bynum enjoys this specific sign because it has “got a lot going on” because, in part, it advertised two separate businesses. She gets excited about decoding the “puzzles” of overlapping signs. As the manufacturer of Baltimore’s staple seasoning, Old Bay, it’s not a surprise that McCormick takes up wall space.

Location:

2546 Harford Road

Baltimore, MD 21218

C.D. Kenny Company

The C.D. Kenny Company was a Baltimore-based importer of coffee and tea. What remains of the sign across from the Hollins Market entrance is one of the bigger ones in the city. Currently, the building is home to ddWorkshop, an architecture and development company, and there are a few tenants who live in apartments upstairs. Like Bynum, the owners have also been intrigued by the sign and dug into its history before moving in.

Location:

1047 Hollins Street

Baltimore, MD 21223

(on the South Arlington Avenue side)

Shelley’s Garage

You’ll find this sign on top of one of the oldest gay bars in the city, Leon’s of Baltimore. It became one of Bynum’s favorites because it was one of the most recent signs she discovered. If it were up to Bynum, she’d spend her days finding ghost signs in cities across America. But for now, she keeps an eye out for any undiscovered signs Baltimore might still have.

“For somebody like me, I’m always looking. It found me or I found it,” she said.

Location:

870 Park Avenue

Baltimore, MD 21201

The Knickerbocker

The Knickerbocker building is a historic building in the Central Business District near City Hall. It’s said to be one of the surviving buildings of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. The building was fully leased when it was sold to an Omaha-based investor for $1.35 million in 2016, according to the Baltimore Business Journal.

The Knickerbocker building sign never fails to make Bynum smile.

If you’re anything like Bynum, once you seek out and find one ghost sign, the others seem to follow, whether you’re going for a stroll in a familiar neighborhood or exploring a new city.

Bynum’s advice?

“Just keep looking up,” she said.

Location:

218 E. Lexington Street

Baltimore, MD 21202