Whaling City Restoration Committee

One of the projects the committee hopes to undertake is the restoration of the UNEEDA BISCUIT sign on the side of the Bacon Building located on Green Street at the corner with State Street in downtown New London.
 
Adolphus Green of Chicago combined approximately 40 Midwestern bakeries and created the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company in 1890. In 1898, Green merged his company with two rival companies, the United States Baking Company and the New York Biscuit Company, to form the National Biscuit Company, a group of 114 bakeries. Green believed this new company needed a new idea to gain the public’s attention and did so with the introduction of the UNEEDA Biscuit in 1898. The cracker was lighter and flakier then anything else being made and had a distinct shape. Until that time, crackers were sold from a large barrel (cracker-barrel), which affected its freshness and taste. Green took the major step in packaging, creating the first “inner-seal package”, a system of inter-folded layers of wax paper and cardboard making it one of the first self-service packages for cracker products. The National Biscuit Company is better known as NABISCO.
 
The New London UNEEDA Biscuit sign has dark letters on a white background. The norm, as seen on existing UNEEDA Biscuit signs across the nation, has light colored letters on a darker background. This sign seems to have been repainted at some time as there are “ghost” letters between the existing letters. The NABISCO logo, a “colophon” (a cross with two bars and an oval is a 15th century Venetian printers’ symbol) and is always shown in white on a red square background. This “colophon” ( on the Bacon building) is a dark color with no red square background, although there is a faint image of the red background square, still present. This is confusing as there could not be a dark colored “colophon” on a dark background.  The committee has decided to repaint the sign as it now shows and committee member, Dave Bishop will do the restoration.

The New London Uneeda Biscuit sign in its current condition...

One of the other Uneeda Biscuit sign in the United States...

A restored Uneeda Biscuit sign...

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