Reviving the neighborhood banner

I love where I live. Kansas City is a fantastic city full of well-meaning people, historical character, road construction, urban charm, social progress, and pretty great tap water. I've lived in the area all my life, but I've only recently moved into the actual city itself. I live in Midtown; specifically, the Plaza/Westport neighborhood.

At some point in the last 30-40 years, it referred to itself as Plaza/Westport Hill and hung up these neat pole banners that are absolutely a product of their times. And while the neighborhood itself stretches from 43rd Street south to 47th Street, from Madison Avenue to Mill Creek Parkway, most of the old pole banners hanging up in the 3-square-block where I live. Sadly, most of them have been torn to shreds thanks to 30-40 years of exposure to the elements. Only a couple remained intact, and are pretty dust- and pollen-crusted at their best. Late last year, they got replaced with a brand new — and slightly more timeless — design.

I snapped a photo of one about a couple years ago with the intent of tracing over it with vector illustration software and never got around to it until recently. I bought a copy of Affinity Designer (which I haven't used in several years; it's still great!) and sat down for a couple hours and traced over it and created what I feel is a pretty good representation of it. I matched the font using WhatTheFont; it's Bodoni TS Bold (or Extra Bold, which is what I used).

Maybe I'll print a poster of it and frame it someday. In the meantime, enjoy:

I would love to know who created the original, so if you're reading this and you know (or it's you!), please get in touch with me!