Chicago Chop Suey Sign Finds New Home After 90 Years, $17,000 Sale

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Chloe Mendel has never eaten at the Orange Garden restaurant in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood, but the large 90-year-old sign that has hung outside the eatery since 1932 has always held a special place in her heart.

Or more specifically, the heart of her husband, Smashing Pumpkins' frontman, Billy Corgan.

The sign, which has the words “Chop Suey” displayed prominently, has been a part of Irving Park Road’s landscape for almost a century. But soon, it will find a home in Madame ZuZu’s — the Highland Park tea shop, vegan café, and used record store that Mendel and Corgan have operated since 2012.

Mendel purchased the sign at auction last weekend for $17,000 — a price that may seem steep to many — but became necessary given the reason that Mendel wanted the piece of Chicago history in the first place.

Mendel and Corgan were en route to a Cubs game around the time of the musician’s birthday a few years back when Mendel asked her husband what he wanted as a gift. Corgan, who grew up around the area that the popular Cantonese restaurant has called home for decades, pointed at the sign.

“He always walked by the sign and thought it was so special and beautiful and cool,” Mendel said in a telephone interview on Friday.

Now, years later, Mendel will not only make her husband’s belated birthday wish come true but will keep the iconic sign from leaving Illinois. The bidding process was fast and furious, last weekend, Mendel told Patch on Friday, but after a five-minute back-and-forth with an out-of-town customer bidding by phone, Mendel walked away with the relic.

And years after Corgan joked about wanting the sign and Mendel believing she could never deliver it, the Highland Park couple is the proud owners of a neon sign that many count among Chicago’s greatest treasures.

The owners of Orange Garden recently announced plans to close the restaurant next year but have told reporters they did not want to see the landmark sign go to waste. The sign, which hasn’t been lit in all of its glory since 2020, went up for auction at Chicago Joe’s last weekend along with other pieces of Chicago history.

The sign went up for bid immediately after the sign at Chicago Joe's — located just three blocks west on Irving Park Road —was sold for $32,400.

When Mendel discovered how much the Chicago Joe’s sign had been sold for, she immediately became nervous. She had come across the sign on social media and figured it couldn’t be the same one Corgan had pointed out years before. But when she discovered it was indeed the same sign, she knew she had to have it.

Corgan, who is currently on tour with Smashing Pumpkins, was not able to attend the auction but was aware his wife was in on the sign. Mendel attended the event with her father but let her husband know that the price war could get heated, pushing Mendel to tell Corgan the prize may come at a steep cost.

“My heart was set on it,” she said Friday. “I was pretty sure (I’d get it). Unless someone was going to blow me out of the water, my heart was set on it and once we started bidding, I think it was pretty clear.”

Five minutes after bidding began on the two-sided sign made out of porcelain, it was over.

The sign is set to come down on Sunday and will be moved up to Highland Park, Mendel said. The large sign will need some restoration, including rewiring it to allow the neon to be restored to its former glory. Once the work is complete, the sign will be added to Madame ZuZu’s collection of Art-Deco pieces that hang in the café.

Mendel said the piece will fit in perfectly and will join the kind of eclectic possessions in Corgan's collection.

The space, which hosts live music events and has been at its current location for two years, will be the perfect home for the sign. Although Mendel isn’t from Chicago originally, she finds comfort in the fact that the sign that her husband once jokingly asked for his birthday will remain close to where it has hung for 90 years.

“I didn’t think it would ever happen,” Mendel told Patch. “I feel like I manifested it over time …the one thing I always say about Chicago is that people are so proud of the city. There’s a passion that is unlike anywhere else and I just love that about here.

“There are so many quirks that you only know about if you live here and we’re just so proud to own something that means so much to so many people and to keep it here.”