Pantibar’s sign: Why we should keep its striking design

Writing in the late 1920s, the German critic Walter Benjamin described the "jerky nearness" of electric signage as a new feature of city life. Where modern culture was observed most keenly – Weimar Germany, Paris, New York – electric signs were a phenomenon, a signal of night-time spectacle and an invitation to pleasure. In time, neon signs in particular became a cliche of urban alienation, but in the early years it was those made of light bulbs that drew most attention. The growth of entertainment districts was signalled by the fixing of hundreds of bulbs shining out the names and attractions of theatres, cinemas, bars and clubs, their concentration forming a "Great White Way", most intensely in New York, along Broadway from 42nd to 53rd street and wrapping around Times Square.

The Pantibar sign on Dublin's Capel Street cleverly plays on these associations and this history. It is made of a black aluminium fascia board supporting red acrylic letters, with white Perspex domes creating a bulb effect. The palette is 1920s German modern, the bulb reference signalling carnivalesque, burlesque entertainments. While it isn't part of a "Great White Way", it heralds probably the most interesting and diverse street in Dublin, where pet shops sit beside the suppliers of martial arts equipment, sex shops beside Karaoke bars beside hardware stores. While a frequent complaint about Grafton Street is that it could be any British high street, Capel Street is gloriously itself. In fact, the Pantibar sign replaced a standard Carlsberg one.

Homogenous styles

However, the owners of the bar have been told they must remove the sign, due to its “projecting nature, size and scale in conjunction with its location above street level and its use of inappropriate materials”. This seems easy enough to argue against – the materials are certainly not inappropriate for this nature of sign in a city-centre location, particularly a street that features so many small businesses with their own unique signage, and is certainly more in keeping with the character of the street than homogenous brand signage.

There are also a few objections to its retention, expressed in easily refuted terms – one appellant says it is “unsightly”, another that it generates “cheap publicity”, and another that it glares into his apartment. Well, it is difficult to argue that this bespoke sign with historic resonance, designed by the acclaimed Niall Sweeney, is “unsightly”; the whole function of a sign is to garner publicity; and surely municipal street lighting creates far more glare than an LED-powered backlit sign?

As with too many planning stories, there is a murky element to these arguments – the bar's owner, Rory O'Neill, has spoken about how he was approached by one of the objectors for a payment to desist from protesting against the sign. No matter, Dublin City Council persisted in turning down the application to retain the sign and the case will now go forward to An Bord Pleanála, with a hearing likely in the autumn.

Exceptional circumstances

Last Wednesday was the final day for submissions on the retention or removal of the sign. It received much support – a petition of up to 20,000 signatures and letters of advocacy from politicians, architectural historians and at least one senior planner in Dublin City Council. The plea to keep the sign is partly on the basis of the “exceptional circumstances” relating to its design and position.

And O'Neill and his supporters may well receive a sympathetic hearing – in February, the Paddywagon tour company was refused permission to remove an unlovely Perspex acrylic sign on their lower Gardiner street premises, although it advertises the Irish Catholic newspaper, which vacated the building almost a decade ago. The ruling was that the sign was "integral to the artistic, social and cultural significance of the building" – if such a case was made for there, then it may augur well for Pantibar, whose sign is far more considered. The conservation officer argued for the Irish Catholic sign partly on grounds of age, intimating it might have been erected in the 1930s and the Pantibar sign is far newer. That doesn't mean it lacks historic importance – the bar was central to the ecstatic celebrations of the marriage referendum last May in which O'Neill's Panti Bliss alter ego played such a leading role.

It seems right to support good contemporary Irish design, those who commission it, and the freedom and equality heralded by this particular piece of modern urban Dublin. Too often, the distant past is celebrated at the expense of the present – as with all cities, the singular needs to co-exist with the ubiquitous for true texture, experience and pleasure.

Dr Lisa Godson is a lecturer in design history and material culture at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She is also one of a group which successfully fought for the retention and preservation of the “Why go Bald” neon sign on Dame Lane in 2001