Downtown Lynn building houses Prime collection

LYNN – Most people confine a hobby to a den or a garage. David Waller?s hobby fills an entire floor in an industrial building he owns in downtown Lynn.Waller collects signs – big ones – such as the red metal and neon lobster that once lit up the night next to Route 1 and a piece of a giant bowling ball sign he picked up in Florida. He owns more than 100 signs, and these relics from 20th-century American highways and main streets are carefully stored in the former Prime Manufacturing Company building at 545 Washington St.A Lynn native who grew up in Lynnfield and works as an advertising special-effects executive, Waller is a lover of all things old. He has done little to renovate the building where workers once built shoe-making equipment and sent the machines out to factories around the world. The exposed wood ceilings and floorboards are intact and the time card punch machine is still in place.Eight tenants, including vintage clothes dealers and artists, occupy space in the building, but the first floor is packed with Waller?s signs. A “Jack?s Joke Shop” sign from Boston shares space near a red neon naked woman who once beckoned customers into a bar in Boston?s Combat Zone.?I got her and her sister for a buck,” said Waller.The sign that once adorned Allerton Laundry Corporation and the Blue Star Bar?s signature sign are in the Prime building along with a Lynnway Bowling sign. Waller, 51, said his childhood bedroom window offered a view of Route 1 with its neon signs lighting up the night in the 1960s and 1970s.The Malden resident collected his first sign – a small tin one – when he was 9 and never stopped. “It?s a hobby. Once you start, it is hard to stop,” he said.He cleans and rewires every sign he collects, using light bulbs he keeps in his home basement shop to bring the signs back to life. Each sign stored in the Prime is in working order, he said.?I have a crane and an electrical shop in my basement. When I?m not busy, I will take a sign home, restore it, test it, and bring it here,” he said.Two of Waller?s largest signs are a Dunkin? Donuts sign with its peeling pink paint that hung over the chain?s Quincy franchise and a McDonald?s sign from the eatery chain?s first Kansas franchise.He picked up most of the signs in New England, but Waller has his sights set on grabbing the iconic Coney Island hot dog sign if the opportunity presents itself. He regularly loans the signs to museum history exhibits and restaurants and currently has about 20 in circulation.?I rent them for a dollar a year,” he said.Waller owns Brickyard VFX and employs about 30 people in Boston and California creating special effects for advertisers. Progressive Insurance?s “Flo” ads include some of Waller?s visual ingenuity.City economic development officials recently announced the Prime building could become home to a new restaurant. Waller said he has been approached on more than one occasion by prospective developers interested in putting a restaurant in his building. Although the building is ideally located for a downtown restaurant, he said renovation costs could be too high to make the idea feasible.?Still, the city?s been great – there?s been real change in City Hall in the last 10 years – there are real progressive-minded people,” he said.