EXETER — The iconic Ioka Theater marquee has found new life as its vibrant pink-and-green neon lights now shine brightly at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Laurie A. Couture, who worked to house the famous downtown Exeter landmark at the museum, drove nearly 2,000 miles from New Hampshire across four days for its official unveiling Friday.
“I almost couldn’t speak because it’s just hard to explain the surreal feeling when you’ve looked at it in downtown Exeter your entire life… and then suddenly see this familiar old friend in a different place,” Couture said after seeing the marquee on display. “It looks 10 times more glitzy and new than it ever did (in its) entire lifetime because now it has been restored. It looked like it was brand new like it was 1940 again.”
The American Sign Museum in Cincinnati is known to house the largest collection of signs in the United States, covering more than 100 years of American sign history.
Couture of Newmarket worked with Ioka developers Jay Caswell and David Cowie to rehome the 19.6-foot-wide triangular marquee as it did not fit into redevelopment plans for the old theater that has been dormant since 2008. The building is being transformed into a mixed-use space with a speakeasy-style restaurant in the basement, retail space on the first floor, and condominiums on the upper floors.
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Couture started a campaign to save the marquee after original plans called for the use of the “IOKA” letters, which would have to be sawed off from the marquee, to be placed on the building’s façade
She started a petition to save the sign, which garnered more than 2,500 signatures.
Couture said the movement to save the marquee resonated because everyone has a memory of the Ioka and its marquee.
"…My grandmother used to go to the Ioka theater… my mom went there… and I used to work at the Ioka with my best friend,” Couture said.
Saving the marquee, she said, was also her way of paying tribute to her late son, Brycen.
Her son was a strong advocate who helped in trying to save the theater in the early 2010s.
“This isn’t about the object, this is about humanity,” she added. “There are people that we will never meet that have long passed away that created the blueprint and the style for that marquee… This marquee represented what Exeter was like back in those days. This is about preserving history and art.”
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American Sign Museum puts spotlight on Ioka marquee
Tod Swormstedt, founder and executive director of the American Sign Museum, said the marquee is the centerpiece of the museum's newly added 20,000-square-foot space featuring “Signs on Main Street.”
“I really wanted a theater marquee,” he said, referring to his plans for the expansion. “It kind of fit the bill of exactly what I was looking for… A lot of times, some of our acquisitions just seem like they’re meant to be.”
The Ioka marquee currently hangs above an entrance that leads visitors into a theater on the right side and a function room on the left.
“What was really ironic and funny is that when I walked into the theater and saw the marquee on the screen,” said Couture. “They use the space to run a little movie about the signs and about the new wing.”
From replacing the panels and changeable letters to installing pink-and-green colored neon light strips, Swormstedt said extensive work was done to the marquee.
The one thing they did not do was repaint it.
Swormstedt said they wanted to retain the original “distressed” look of the sign.
Couture said she had “a sense of deja vu” when she walked underneath the Ioka marquee and into a theater at the museum.
“Every time I would come out (of the theater), it was like I was looking for Water Street,” she recalled. “It was the weirdest sensation.”
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