Merita, curvy roadside icon, finds home at Morse Museum

When news broke in late 2012 that Orlando's venerable Merita Bread Bakery would close, reaction ranged from concern for workers losing their jobs to questions about the fate of the huge Merita sign overlooking Interstate 4 a Central Florida icon since the 1960s.

Seen from I-4 near the Kaley exit, the large, curvy red letters spelling "Merita" were long accompanied by the homey smell of baking bread, and by a clock that supplied drivers with the time and temperature, too.

It was the perhaps the largest surviving sign designed by the Bob Galler, a true artist of neon who died this past August at 84.

It's fitting that, like some of Galler's other creations, the Merita sign will soon reside in the collections of the Charles Hosmer Museum of American Art in Winter Park. If all goes as planned, the sign will be relocated this month to the Morse warehouse, where it will join Galler signs for Ronnie's and Gary's Duck Inn restaurants.

Artist of our landscape

When Galler retired in late 2006 as design vice president of Orlando's Graphic Systems Inc., he signed off on more than a half-century of shaping Central Florida's visual landscape.

By the way, when he designed the Merita sign in the 1960s, it bore a round tick-tock clock at the top, instead of the digital display added later.

In addition to his work for Ronnie's and Gary's, Galler's credits include well-known signs for McNamara Pontiac, Church Street Market, NASCAR and Walt Disney World. He devised the 1980s version of Orlando's downtown Christmas star that's still in use as the center of the current decoration.

The McKean legacy

Galler was great fun to talk with about his work because he genuinely loved it, a trait he shared with the late Hugh McKean, who became interested in commercial signs while director of the Morse a museum most closely identified with the elegant stained-glass creations of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

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Merita, curvy roadside icon, finds home at Morse Museum