Brian Johnson finds a lot of Roseville’s history on the job.
The third-generation plumber is in and out of basements and back rooms, and he has an eye for the spots where local relics tend to settle.
Johnson’s aesthetic is 20th-century commercial Americana, which he says is a tribute to small businesses and a time before online shopping, when you could walk uptown in any small town and buy a pair of shoes or a suit.
His collection of his hometown’s commercial history is now a full-fledged roadside attraction along Illinois Route 116 called the Roseville Sign Museum.
His favorite among the signs is a mid-century metal one that once sat atop the Roseville State Bank. Johnson said he wanted the sans serif bank sign for his collection after seeing a 1952 photo of the bank.
“I bet it wasn't two weeks after that I was in the bank basement doing doing a service call and just happened to see that tucked under the stairs, just kind of standing up,” Johnson said. “I knew exactly what it was when I saw it.”
The Roseville State Bank sign now sits atop the Roseville Sign Museum. Below are old Pepsi and Phillips 66 signs alongside signs that once hung outside businesses like Roseville Variety and Dale Watson Seed Co.
The sign that started the collection was for Paul’s Appliance, the family’s plumbing, electrical, and appliance business launched in 1951. The eye for local history runs in Johnson’s family.
“My grandpas collected, my dad collected, I’ve collected,” Johnson said. “I’ve taken from them what was some of theirs.”
Despite that, it wasn’t necessarily a dream of Johnson’s to display the collection.
“It was never, let’s build a sign museum,” Johnson said.
Instead, the museum evolved from Johnson’s fixing up the former Meeks Super Mart.
“It closed in the mid mid 80s,” Johnson said. “Probably my grandpa bought in ’87 and then I bought it from my dad in ’07 maybe. And then I inherited the mess of fixing the roof got it to this point. It's been a ten-year process to get to this.”
Inside the building is Johnson’s plumbing business. On the east side, there’s a welcome to Roseville mural. Johnson’s signs are displayed on the west side, where there’s enough space that Johnson envisions another mural.
After Johnson displayed his signs, a funny thing happened. People in the community started bringing him other stuff from the village’s past — calendars, yearbooks, memorabilia, and branded promotional items from rulers to lipstick blotting papers.
So Johnson built what a he calls a micro museum in the front of the building. It’s a 6 by 12 foot room with a 5 by 7 window.
Inside, is an ever-changing display of Roseville’s past. That can range from old letterman’s jackets to the movie rewinder from the LaRose Theater, from a milkshake maker salvaged from a long-gone shop to a barber’s chair.
For Johnson, it’s about Roseville and his family’s history but also the thrill of finding and saving pieces of that past, like an old Roseville bowling alley bench that’s on display in the micro museum.
“They got sold and moved to Stronghurst. And then I actually was doing a job in Stronghurst and I saw one and talked to the guy about it and ended up buying them back from him and moved them back here,” Johnson said. “We restored it back to the color that it used to be, which is that kind of tangerine."
There is no admission fee to the Roseville Sign Museum and no set hours. You just go to 295 West Penn Ave. and pull in the lot. If you stop by at night, you won’t miss anything. Johnson has installed lighting on his signs – and a motion-activated light at the micro museum.
“These things may all be Roseville related, but every small town in America can relate to what we have here, and how they tell a story of the families that started a small business to support their family, and who helped build their communities to be what they are,” Johnson said.
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