The Johnny’s Big Red Grill sign will not be illuminating Dryden Road in the near future. Last week, the sign traveled to its new home in the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, where sign enthusiasts and nostalgic Cornell alumni will be able to visit it after a lengthy restoration process.

The sign’s journey to the museum was far from smooth. Last spring, Carolyn Coplan ’76 bought the sign on eBay, intending to return it to the Cornell community. While many business owners initially expressed interest in acquiring the sign, in the end, no one volunteered to take it off Coplan’s hands as a result of the sign’s enormous size and equally massive restoration costs.

An acquaintance let her store the sign in his barn, but only until it began to snow. Coplan set a Nov. 1 deadline to decide the sign’s fate.

“Our first choice had been to donate it to Cornell,” Coplan said. “But nobody wanted to take it.”

With the help of Alderperson Mary Tomlan (D-4th Ward), Coplan offered the sign to historical institutions throughout the city. Paying for the sign’s restoration, however, represented a financial burden that Ithaca’s museums were not prepared to take on.

“Like most of everyone else we didn’t have the resources to restore it,” said Alfonse Pieper, executive director of Historic Ithaca.

The physical size of the sign would also make it difficult to store.

“We couldn’t take it here,” said Donna Eschenbrenner, archivist at the Ithaca History Center. “I wish we could but we didn’t have space.”

Online research led Coplan to museums that preserved signs, including one institution in Las Vegas that specialized in neon lights. She ultimately chose the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati.

“This one seemed not that far away,” she said, “so I e-mailed the director. His father went to Cornell, so it seemed like a good fit.”

She was referring to Tod Swormstedt, the museum’s founder, who, like Coplan, felt emotionally drawn to the sign because of his close family ties to Cornell. Swormstedt also expressed pity for the sign’s poor condition.

“It was just sitting out in the barn getting in worse and worse shape,” he said.

Unlike Ithaca’s small institutions, the American Sign Museum has the requisite space needed to house the sign. The museum, located in a former parachute factory, has high ceilings. It also has an in-house restoration facility, which would significantly cut the costs of restoring the sign.

“It’s sad that Ithaca lost something unique to Ithaca and Cornell,” Coplan said. “But [the museum is] a good place for it.”

Although many feel drawn to the sign because of its nostalgic value, the sign also holds a unique place in the history of neon signs.

“Johnny’s is a very important sign because the image is very figurative,” said Stefan Osdene ’04, who wrote his undergraduate senior thesis on neon signs as part of the College Scholar Program and is currently writing a cultural history of bling. “You didn’t see a lot of mascots on restaurant signs in Central New York in the 1940s. I’ve never seen another restaurant sign from that period using a mascot.