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Institution:
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Image World
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Collection Name:
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Streetcar Advertising Cards
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Category:
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Specialty Collections
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Link to collection:
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https://imageworld.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/s/5id647
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Description:
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You might be surprised to learn that many of the consumer brands and products we enjoy today exist because of streetcar advertising. The Industrial Revolution of the early 1900’s and a massive consumer audience riding over 50,000 streetcars in nearly 3,000 cities and towns in every state of the union provided a great opportunity for Barron Collier, a native of Memphis, Tennessee. He simply used streetcar advertising to bring these two forces together and created the largest streetcar advertising empire in the world. By age twenty-six, he was a millionaire and at one time had business offices in 70 cities with business interests in more than a thousand cities. Most of these advertising cards have remarkable color graphics; over 650 of them are included in this database for your viewing pleasure. While streetcar advertising is definitely not a major advertising medium today, the advertising community might be surprised to learn that the basic principles of consumer advertising have not changed that much in the last one hundred years. You might be surprised to learn which companies are still producing these popular products and brands as they represent some of the most successful businesses in America today. Special thanks to Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista, CA, Seymour Stein, Chairman of Sire Records, and others who contributed digital images to this collection. Likewise, special thanks also go to Linda Roy who has been responsible for RESTORING most of these streetcar card images.
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