Lost San Diego — Ben-Hur Coffee
April 10, 2012
In continuing fascination for all things old such as the Dr Pepper/Hires Root Beer sign I spied downtown a few years ago, I had to stop to take a snap of this vintage painted sign for Ben-Hur Coffee.
Although I’ve never seen a can of Ben-Hur Coffee, research shows that this brand was a tie-in with the 1925 MGM silent movie (it was remade in 1959 starring Charlton Heston). Coffee, toiletries and fragrances were some of the commercial tie-ins for the novel and movie.
The mural can been seen on the corner of Ivy and India Street in Little Italy, facing east. San Diego Reader has some background information about this painting here. Antique collectors can find vintage tins online including Etsy and eBay.
Darlene
Our Man Horn
Wow… ancient find! So surprised it’s held up so well too.
My grandfather had a Ben-Hur tin. Not sure if it was for coffee but he held his various nicknacks in it.
That tin is a collectible!
Very cool! I love seeing ghost paintings/ads on the sides of buildings…
I wish there were more. The billboards nowadays are so boring.
Great find! In addition to what the Reader says, the original incarnation of Ben-Hur was the wildly popular 1880 novel by General Lew Wallace.
My parents, Nancy and Chris Cote (now of grafiksad.com) painted this. I believe it was one of the first jobs they had when they moved from Michigan to San Diego. I must have been 2 or so so that was around 1978.
Thanks for the bit of information. I love knowing who was behind this. I hope it stays around for a long time.
This mural was done closer to 1982. I still have pictures of it when it was finished and a picture of the can that we painted the mural from. The building was owned by Arnold and Esther Belinsky of “Arnold’s Furniture fame. Remember their commercials’ by-line “From our family to yours”. Arnold had hired an architect to redo the building more upscale for tenants. It was a Ben Hur Coffee warehouse prior and had a large advertisement on it for Ben Hur Coffee. The architect hired a sandblasting company to clean the brick exterior and they removed the ad. I recall Arnold was quite upset. He hired my wife and myself to put something back up. I proposed just a simple large mural of the can. It took a week to produce. The area of the mural had to be primed several coats with a thick primer because of the roughness of the brick. I will post the pics on my facebook page. Here is a link about the owners and their son. http://www.ranchosantafereview.com/2011/07/18/retired-furniture-dealer-recounts-highlights-of-career-impacted-by-family-competitive-tennis-f-scott-fitzgerald/ Here is the link to the photo http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=431368136933940&set=pcb.431371780266909&type=1&theater