White Way sign company files for bankruptcy

Chicago company built iconic downtown signs

(Above) Two views of a sign that was owned by White Way Electric Sign & Maintenance Company and located next to Marina City for many years. The image at left is from a photo taken in June 1965 by Mike Kobluk. At right is a frame from the 1965 movie Mickey One. Warren Beatty is climbing a railing down to Marina City’s west tower parking ramp. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

20-Nov-14 – The company that built some of Chicago’s most iconic signs has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

White Way Electric Sign & Maintenance Company is listing liabilities of $50 million and assets of less than $10 million. The filing seeks debt relief and is not a total liquidation of the company.

White Way has been around since 1916. The family-owned business built marquees for Chicago Theatre, Oriental Theatre, and Wrigley Field, along with scoreboards at Comiskey Park, U.S. Cellular Field, and United Center. The company has about 20 employees at a 34,000 square foot facility in Mount Prospect, Illinois.

(Left) Chicago Theater on North State Street in 2003. The vertical “Chicago” sign, created and installed by White Way, is a recent version of the original. In 2011, a logo for Chase was added.

When it was still located in Waukegan, White Way designed, built, and maintained a beacon on the 426-foot broadcast tower built in 1964 on top of Marina City’s west tower. The beacon for WBKB (now WLS-TV) used red lights to display the weather forecast and to indicate if a local sports team won or lost that day.

Seen in photographs and movies throughout the 1960s, a sign for Seay & Thomas real estate company was on top of a warehouse at 320 North Dearborn Street, on the north side of the Chicago River, directly across Dearborn from Marina City. The sign and the building were gone by 1987 when the 20-story Hotel Nikko was built. It is now the Westin Chicago River North.

“We expect to survive this,” Jim Morgan, a Chicago bankruptcy attorney who is representing White Way, told the Chicago Tribune. “We just need to retool and we will continue to provide the same service.”

The company’s name is from the nickname for New York’s brightly lit theater district, “The Great White Way.”