If you look closely, the old painted signs on buildings in downtown Youngstown have quite a story to tell.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were signs all around that downtown Youngstown was booming.

Prime real estate meant prime space to advertise.

Rebecca Rogers, a Mahoning Valley Historical Society board member, said "Remember we're before radio. We're before television. A newspaper might have been around but word of mouth was how you heard where you were going to shop."

More than 100 years later as more buildings come down, this artwork is popping up.

Advertisements painted on the side of the Morley Building on West Boardman Street are visible since the State Theater was demolished.

Bill Lawson, the executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, said that the signs predate 1927 and were well preserved by the State Theater up against them.

One ad was for Washburn and Crosby Breads. It was known for the world's finest flour in the 1880s and is the same flour we know today as Gold Medal Flour.

At the corner of North Hazel and Commerce Streets, a Gallagher's Wholesale Liquor Store sign resurfaced after the Liberty/Paramount Theater was torn down.

The Gallagher Building was built in 1904 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Rebecca Rogers researched the building's history to help get it on the list.

"This building became the center of the largest wholesaler of liquor in Northeastern Ohio," said Rogers.

Owner John Gallagher immigrated to Youngstown from Ireland in the 1860s. He worked his way up the ladder from bartender to business owner.

"He had two beautiful daughters who married the two most eligible and wonderful notorious Youngstown men. He had sort of all of those glamour spots that we think of as celebrating coming to America."

The Gatta Group, which is renovating the Gallagher Building, would also like to restore the sign. They plan to turn the building into a restaurant and brewery with apartments.

Other signs of the time can be faintly seen on the side of the Tyler History Center, which used to be home to Burt's Confectionary and later Ross Radio.

"Well Burt's is famous not only locally, a well known maker of candy and ice cream, but nationally because Harry Burt in the early 1920s invented Good Humor ice cream which was making an ice cream treat on a stick so you didn't get your hands messed up," said Lawson.

All snapshots in time that are keeping the valley's rich history alive.