Spokane Neon Museum

The story

Before plastic lightboxes and cheap LEDs took over streetscapes, Spokane’s commercial strips hummed with hand-bent glass tubes filled with argon and neon gas. Local artist Chris Bovey spent years salvaging these decaying roadside artifacts before they hit the scrap yards, rewiring transformers and repairing broken glass tube by tube. What started as a personal rescue project has grown into phase one of a dedicated public institution: the Spokane Neon Museum.

The museum debuted its first collection inside Bovey’s Vintage Print + Neon shop in the historic Boulevard Building on North Monroe Street. Walking through the door puts you nose-to-glass with roughly a dozen fully restored commercial signs that once hung over long-gone Spokane storefronts and taverns. Because they're mounted inside at eye level rather than high on an exterior brick wall, you can hear the distinct high-voltage hum, feel the faint heat off the tubes, and inspect the hand-formed glass craft up close.

Supported in part by local business district activation grants, the collection is actively building toward a permanent, standalone home. For now, the glowing signs share floor space with Bovey's own screen prints of regional landmarks, making the storefront feel less like a formal archive and more like a buzzing indoor sanctuary for lost commercial art.