The Neon Sign Museum is an outdoor collection of restored vintage neon signs installed along 97 Street in Edmonton's Chinatown district. About twenty signs from former Edmonton businesses — a motor hotel, a Chinese restaurant, a used car lot, a dry cleaner — have been returned to working condition and mounted on poles along the street, illuminating the sidewalk at night in the colours of the commercial Edmonton of several decades past.
The effect at dusk is worth timing for: the signs flicker on as the daylight fades, casting warm neon glow onto the street in a neighbourhood that otherwise shows its age fairly plainly. The signs span from the 1950s to the 1980s, and the range of typography and colour gives a vivid sense of how the strip once looked.
The collection is free to visit and is always accessible — it is, after all, just a street. The best time is after dark on a clear evening. The surrounding area in Chinatown has grocery stores, barbershops, and a handful of restaurants that have been operating since the sign era.