The SF Chronicle reports that Jamestown Properties, a company that since 2013 has owned Fisherman’s Wharf-adjacent tourist destination Ghirardelli Square, will remove the structure’s massive “Ghirardelli” sign piece-by piece in coming days, with a plan to erect a new sign later this summer.

The sign is, of course, a landmark — and it also serves to advertise the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, a confectionery business that, per its website, was launched in the 1800s by Domenico Ghirardelli as “Ghirardely & Girard,” making it the third-oldest chocolate company in the U.S.

Eventually, the company bought a city block previously occupied by the Pioneer Woolen Building, and turned it into a candy-making factory — then, as part of the 1915 World’s Fair (according to Sidney Lawrence’s The Ghirardelli Story) the huge “Ghirardelli” was added to the structure.

There it remained even after the Golden Grain Macaroni Company bought Ghirardelli in the 1960s, moving chocolate production to a building in San Leandro and flipping the former factory. Subsequent owners converted the building into Ghirardelli Square, a restaurant and retail space that the city named an official landmark some years later. All this, as the gigantic “Ghirardelli” sign continued to shine.

(It’s not just Ghirardelli Square that’s changed hands a number of times: the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company has since been passed from Golden Grain to Quaker Oats to a private investment group to — in 1998 — Swiss-based company Lindt and Sprüngli.)

It appears that the years have taken a toll on the sign, as Jamestown tells the Chron that it’s suffered from persistent “electrical failures” in recent years. Soon, workers will remove the sign letter-by-letter, transport it “to an offsite facility,” and build a new sign to take its place.

That new sign, Jamestown says, will be revealed later this summer — and in the meantime, if you notice that the old sign is missing in part or in whole, now you know why.

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