Gerald Ensley: Father Time turns off lights on a Tallahassee landmark

(This column was first published in the Tallahassee Democrat on Feb. 4, 2007.)

Perhaps you didn't notice, but Tallahassee lost an icon last summer: The Prince Murat Motel's big neon sign came down.

After nearly a half-century of presiding over the intersection of Monroe Street and Thomasville Road, the black-and-white behemoth was replaced by a small blue plastic sign.

The old sign was 40 feet tall and was made of painted sheet metal and neon lights. It was the last of the giant, 1950s-era motel signs that once dotted Tallahassee. Like most symbols of a baby boomer's childhood, it fell victim to age.

"It was hard to maintain; it was hard to find someone to fix it," said Jagdish Patel, the motel's owner since 1996. "I liked it. If I had a choice, I would have kept it. But the neon lights kept going out, and they were the most important part."

The sign came down in July. Gray's Signs, owned by Paul Golden, spent a week wrestling it to the ground. It took a crane, blow torches and electric saws to dismantle it, cut it up and haul away the pieces.

The sign had filled the Tallahassee sky for 41 years.

The Prince Murat opened May 3, 1965. It was a shiny 28-room, glass-and-brick structure built on the site of the Colonial Hotel, which had operated in two old wooden houses from 1939 to 1963.

The big sign was put up by Leon Neon Sign Co., said Gene Gibson, then a glass blower with the company and later the owner. It was one of many big hotel signs put up by the company, including the Gandy Motor Lodge in Perry and Tallahassee's long-gone Ponce de Leon Hotel on West Tennessee Street. Gibson remained the chief repairman for the Prince Murat sign until he retired a few years ago.

"(Big hotel signs) were landmarks," Gibson said. "I hated to see the Prince Murat sign come down."

The Tallahassee phone book listed 17 hotels and motels when the Prince Murat opened in 1965. Its was the snazziest, advertising "direct dial phones" and "morning coffee" along with televisions, individual room-temperature controls and "credit cards accepted."

"It was the nicest hotel in town when I was growing up," said Kathy Doolan of the Leon County Property Appraiser's Office.

But as the new hotels swarmed over Tallahassee - we now have more than 50 - the Prince lost its cachet. By the 1990s, its clientele ran to transients, European tourists intrigued by the name and the occasional lady of the night.

In 1996, a day laborer was found suffocated in one of the rooms (the homicide case is still open). In 2004, a man and woman were found dead in a car parked by the Dumpster (an Orlando man was acquitted of the slayings in December).

The motel's office is still rather old-timey: Room keys hang from the wall, a Rolodex-style mileage counter to U.S. cities is on the desk and a sign advertises "All Rooms $40."

But Patel is trying to restore the motel's luster as he renovates one room at a time.

"When I took over, there were bad impressions, lots of hookers and drugs," said Patel, who lives behind the office. "But I've cleaned it up. I keep it quiet. We have lots of good clients."

Patel considered changing the name when he had the sign removed. But Paul Golden's wife, Terri, a Tallahassee native, besieged him with stories about its namesake: Prince Achille Murat, nephew of Napoleon, an early 19th-century landholder and personality in Tallahassee who is buried downtown.

"We had to do something to keep the name," said Terri Golden. "It's part of our history."

Neon lights, which are glass tubes filled with gas lit by an electric charge, are still popular. Paul Golden said many local plastic-covered signs are illuminated from the inside by neon lights. There are numerous small neon-lit beer and "Open" signs. Tallahassee still has a few small old-style neon business signs, such as Troy Fain Insurance at 1147 E. Tennessee St.

But big signs are disappearing because of modern sign ordinances that aim to reduce urban clutter. Tallahassee's 1984 ordinance states that signs can't be more than 200 square feet in area or taller than 25 feet. Existing big signs like the Prince Murat were grandfathered in by a 1998 amendment. But once they're removed, they can't be replaced by a similar-sized sign.

"That's pretty much a national thing," said Tod Swormstedt. "The trend since the 1980s has been to smaller and smaller signs. It's more a code thing than anything else."

Swormstedt is the founder of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, the nation's most comprehensive sign museum. He has 250 illuminated signs, big and small, dating from 1900 to the 1950s.

Swormstedt said vintage signs are avidly collected by Americana buffs. But the really big signs, such as the Prince Murat's, generally wind up discarded because of the difficulty of transporting and storing them.

His museum has saved several - which bring smiles to the faces of the 200 people who visit his museum each month.

"A lot of these signs are cultural icons: McDonald's arches, the Holiday Inn signs," Swormstedt said. "They provide an emotional attachment to the past. When people look at old signs, they conjure up fond memories."

Just like the Prince Murat Motel sign.

Gerald Ensley was a reporter and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1980 until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2018 following a stroke. The Tallahassee Democrat is publishing columns capturing Tallahassee’s history from Ensley’s vast archives each Sunday through 2024 in the Opinion section as part of the TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Gerald Ensley: Father Time turns off lights on a Tallahassee landmark