SEE IT: The Neon Christmas House is a bright, shining slice of roadside Americana
SEE IT: The Neon Christmas House is a bright, shining slice of roadside Americana
Using salvaged signage from chain stores, Jeff Rocklein of Long Island has created a magical holiday display.
“The Great Christmas Light Fight” TV show needs more neon and classic signage, I say, and the show’s producers need look no farther than Jeff Rocklein’s house at 143 Rowland St. in Patchogue, New York.
For 13 years now, Jeff has been creating Christmas magic outside his Long Island home, and each year, the display has become a little more dazzling.
It all began in 2010, when Jeff placed a neon Christmas wreath outside his house. He’d fabricated it while taking a glass-blowing class at Brooklyn Glass in Park Slope.
“And that was the catalyst. I was like, ‘Oh, man, I can cover this house with neon,’” Jeff told me.
And so it began.
You see, Jeff loves roadside Americana, and when I met up with him Saturday night outside his house, our conversation spanned 1990s post-modern Taco Bells, Hollywood Burger Kings, the grim fate of Chuck E. Cheese animatronic bands, A-frame IHOPs (down to their bulbous parking-lot lights), mansard McDonald’s, yellow Wendy’s. In short, all the stuff I love and that I share here on my newsletter and Instagram.
What’s more, Jeff is around signs for a living. He’s a sign electrician, installing them, maintaining them, and, particularly relevant here, taking them down when businesses close or decide to take a new design direction.
The last step for these signs is usually the trash, but not when Jeff is around. (His colleagues in the business give him a little ribbing for his Dumpster-diving ways, but he’s also enlisted them in his search.) For years, he’s been salvaging what he can — colorful tubing, letters, light bulbs, metal, you name it.
He always knew there was something creative he could do with this motley collection — other than sit in carton boxes in the basement.
Then it came, the flash of inspiration, the light-bulb moment. It occured to Jeff that he could turn all that design detritus into holiday light displays at his house, and thus was born the Neon Christmas House, which you can visit on Instagram if you can’t make it out in person.
None of these signs — not a single one — was a holiday sign. Their parts came from bank branches, pharmacies, old delicatessens, everything BUT holiday shops.
But with a little imagination, spit and polish, and maybe just a little magic, Jeff’s salvaged signage has become a glowing tribute to the Christmas spirit rather than a depressing reminder of our throwaway society.
For example, the letters for the Santa sign, above, come from a defunct blue-jean store in San Francisco. The red neon tubing around it? It comes from an old Duane Reade pharmacy.
In fact, the blue and red neon tubing throughout the display all come from Duane Reade — the green tubing had to be manufactured — while the neon ovals around the window are from Rite Aid’s “Open 24 Hour” signs.
“It's such a shame. They were ditching them to get LED ones, and I was like, ‘What a waste,’” Jeff said.
The “Ho, Ho Ho” letters within one of those ovals? The “Hs” came from pharmacies, and the “Os” Jeff had to get manufactured.
“That’s the most constricting part. I can dream of anything, but I’m like, “I don’t have an M,” and that’s where a little ingenuity and outside help come in handy.
Each year, Jeff adds a new signature element to the display. In 2023, he created an Art Deco theater marquee — The Noel Theater — over his front door, with signage counting down the days to Christmas. He’d gotten his hands on some neon letters that use Handel Gothic, a perfect font for an Art Deco marquee. The letters were salvaged from a chain of regional animal hospitals that was changing its signage.
The metal blade on the NOEL sign itself had to be manufactured. Jeff salvaged the metal from a chain of banks, discarding its signage as part of a rebrand.
The chasing light bulbs on the marquee come from the letter “I” in the words Rite Aid. The readerboard was saved from old Rite Aids, once used on pylon signs outside the building. (Jeff had to buy the letters themselves for the readerboard.)
The angular neon tubing on the marquee came from a TD Bank in New York City.
A signature piece from a previous year that towers above the house is the Merry Christmas sign.
This beauty was sourced from CVS signage, while the “E” in Merry and the second “R” are very old, originating from a beautiful, stainless-steel sign from a long-defunct delicatessen in New York City.
You don’t need me to tell you the “R” in Christmas comes from a Toys R Us, in this case, one that closed in Queens. The “I” came from a branch of Citibank.
I just love the joyful, playful ingenuity of what Jeff has created here. It truly is a gift, one that I’m certain you’d enjoy seeing for yourself.
While Jeff and I were chatting, a couple pulled up in their car and stopped to take pictures, enthusiastically declaring the theater marque as the best part.
At that moment, I really understood the magic of what Jeff has done here.
We exchanged Merry Christmases with the couple, and they were off into the night.
I bet they won’t have sugar plums dancing in their heads this Christmas.
Instead, it will be neon lights, and that’s a merry thought, indeed.
