The Joker (1884)

In 1884, P.W. Zeigler advertised his stoves, tinware, pumps and drive wells. He also sold Joker solid-wheel wooden windmills, an unusual type manufactured in Peabody, Kansas and known for its back-gearing. This made for a more efficient and uniform pump stroke per wheel rotation.

Image above:  P.W. Zeigler advertisement. Riley County Blue Book and Directory. Manhattan, KS: 1884.

States on Stage (1884)

Chicago designers Trowbridge and Petford developed this advertising map for H.W. Hill & Company, the nation's largest manufacturer of hog rings. Hill had utilized the cartographic format for a previous promotional effort, his Map of the United States, Showing the Farm Animals in Each State (1878).

While the earlier ad incorporated Department of Agriculture data, the 1884 map employed cartoonish pigs to represent each state's common nickname. William Eugene Sutphin Trowbridge, a designer, and Charles E. Petford, the Haverly Theatre's scenic artist, combined forces for Hill's Advertising Department.  They created a colorful map revealed through stage curtains by a porcine clown and an impresario.

Dakota Territory and Louisiana are the only regions that feature architectural elements, with a Native American tepee representing "In the Land of the Dakotas" and an ornamental balustrade suggesting the Creole state. Iowa's Hawkeye has a bird's eye view of a railroad bridge, a steamboat and a distant town. Vermont's "Granite State Boys" features a monumental pig statue.

Potential customers could purchase the map for merely 5¢.

Image above:  Nicknames of the States. Decatur, IL: H.W. Hill & Co., 1884. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. URL:  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003671557/

New Orleans As Divine Feminine

In 1915, New Orleans bungalow architect Morgan Dudley E. Hite (1882-1959) developed a map titled "New Orleans --Center of the World" (shown above). Mayor Martin Behrman's administration liked the map so much, it was used in a full-page advertisement the following year (shown below), accompanied by the passage:

"New Orleans is not content to rest secure and apathetic in her position as the center of the world, the center of world population, the center of world-production, the center of world-navigation.

"That much was done for the City of New Orleans by Nature.

"But to supplement this handsome and generous work of Nature the City of New Orleans is building for the future when the new industrial empire at her door will have been developed; when the wet lands at her door have been reclaimed; when the cut-over pine lands will have been turned to the plow; when the natural resources of her tributary section will have been made to yield the golden tribute of their promise."(1)

(1)"The Eyes of the World Are on New Orleans." Trade Index 28:6 (June 1916); recto of back cover. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

WTC: Concrete's Poster Child

As Edward D. Stone's International Trade Center and Curtis & Davis' Exhibition Center (Rivergate) neared completion, the Portland Cement Association featured the structures in its Fortune magazine advertisements. Utilizing an illustration by poster artist Bob Peak (1927-92), Portland's copywriters stressed that concrete made good "business sense."

"Concrete gives a world trade center built-in sales appeal. The buildings of New Orleans' new International Trade Center are designed to serve the buyers and sellers of merchandise from every corner of the world. Here, through the imaginative use of concrete, is expressed the very spirit and pace of modern-day trade. In the Convention-Exhibition building, the New Orleans architects used a concrete barrel shell roof to create striking beauty, as well as an interior clear span of 225 feet, sufficient to seat 17,600 people. Textured exterior concrete walls provide tasteful concrete throughout. The highly compressible qualities of New Orleans' soils were mastered by prestressed concrete piles, providing firm foundations for the light but strong reinforced concrete frame and floors designed by advanced new structural criteria. Gleaming exterior curtain wall panels of precast concrete assure visual interest."

Image above: Bob Peak, illustrator for Portland Cement Association. "Concrete Gives a World Trade..." Promotional flyer. [Published in Fortune July 1965].  Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Water Fight

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) and the Association for Preservation Technology International (APTI) recently completed a mass digitization project. Thanks to financial support from the APTI, nearly 700 of the SEAA's architectural trade catalogs have now been included in the Internet Archive's Building Technology Heritage Library.

The illustration above was used as the cover for the Kuhn Paint Company's promotional manual regarding waterproofing. Harry J. Kuhn managed the Kuhn Paint & Varnish Works, which was based in Houston, Texas. He was a prominent member of the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association's Varnish Manufacturers' Committee. As early as 1921, he sought to enhance his marketing by hiring New Yorker Allen B. Henry as his advertising and sales promotion manager.

After World War II, Kuhn distributed an important pamphlet written by Lonore Kent (1907-1993), who also penned Paint Power and How to Sell It and From the World's Four Corners for the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association. Kent's How to Win Your War Against Water itemized the need to establish good household ventilation and "vapor barriers."

You may wonder about representing moisture and paint in a bellicose relationship.

For more about the relevant history of building science, see Dr. Allison Bailes III's "Why Did Painters Refuse to Paint Insulated Houses in the 1930s?" Energy Vanguard Blog. 18 November 2013.

Image above: Lonore Kent. How to Win Your War Against Water. National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, undated. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Formica 1966

In the spring of 1966, Formica® Corporation was advertising its solid color and wood grain patterns for use in horizontal and vertical applications. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the company was then a subsidiary of American Cyanamid. Touting the product's heat and scratch resistance, companies such as the Louisiana Elevator Corporation recommended it for use in elevator cab walls.

1966 customers could choose from colors named "Absinthe," "Chutney" and "Matador," among others (top image, above). Woodgrain selections included "Malacca Teak," "Paldao," and "Macassar Ebony" (lower image above).

Images above: Louisiana Elevator Corporation Contract for 630 Gravier Street, Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

USCO Pencils

After World War II, the United States Pencil Company, Incorporated, was selling its USCO pencils for 2 cents each.  Customers could request personalized pencils at additional cost.  The sturdy pencils had erasers attached to the wood stylus with a slender embossed brass ferrule.  The company's standard issue was its No. 486, which during the war featured cardboard ferrules due to rationing.  If you want to learn more about WWII-era (and other) pencils, see Bob Truby's "Brand Name Pencils."

Image above:  United States Pencil Company, Incorporated/487 Broadway/New York, NY.  "Special--For This Month Only!" circa 1946.  Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

New Orleans Mad Men

An example of American marketing well before the Mad Men era.  

In 1939, Ronald S. Renaudin (1912-2001), the manager of Gulf's Central Service Station on Canal and South Claiborne Streets sent this ad to Guy Seghers Sr. (1898-1986), a local surveyor.  Seghers, bless his heart, was a very thrifty businessman who saved every scrap of paper that came his way -- calendars, advertisements, envelopes -- in order to sketch out his lot surveys and transcribe chain of title information on the blank back sides. In this case, the verso of the advertisement delineates street lines associated with a property in Square 627 of the First Municipal District of Orleans Parish.

Renaudin (above left) was a native New Orleanian, graduated from Warren Easton High School, attended Tulane University, and then joined the Gulf Oil Company in 1933 as a service station salesman. By 1937 he was Gulf's merchandising salesperson, by 1958 he was division manager of retail and jobber sales, and by 1965 regional manager for Gulf's Central Region, based in New Orleans. His career spanned four decades, from the great depression through the post-War economic boom.

Gulf's 1939 personalized direct mail advertisement featured an illustration by John August Groth (1908-1988), Esquire Magazine's first art editor, most widely known as a teacher at the Art Students League and for his illustrations of American military combat. Some of his depression-era social commentary drypoints may be viewed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's website here.

Images above:  R.G. Renaudin, Gulf Central Service Station mailer to Mr. Seghers, 22 November 1939, Guy Seghers Office Records, "District 1 Square 627," Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

"R.G. Renaudin, New Orleans division manager, marketing for Gulf Oil Corporation, discusses high cost of education with Dr. Albert W. Dent, president of Dillard University.  At a chapel ceremony, Dr. Dent had just accepted from Gulf a $1,000 unrestricted grant for use by Dillard's department of education under Gulf's comprehensive aid to education program."  The Crisis (December 1961): p. 638 as viewed in Google Books 26 March 2012.