Visual Materials
Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Theatrical Broadsides and Playbills
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Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera contains more than 2,300 printed items primarily advertising theatrical and musical entertainment and related performers in the United States from 1839 to the 1940s, with the majority of items dating from the 1870s to the 1890s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations pertaining to a wide variety of performance genres that have been grouped broadly as music and theater (including theater, music, dance, burlesque, comedy, pantomime, and variety); minstrel (including minstrel shows, blackface entertainers, and female minstrels); and magic and miscellaneous (including magicians, motion pictures, and Wild West shows). Materials are arranged into two series: small-size items (11 x 14 inches or less) and large-size items (bigger than 11 x 14 inches). Small size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name. The collection has 450 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic theatrical and minstrel posters that were intended to advertise specific shows or performers. Small-size items in the collection number approximately 1,850 and are comprised mainly of promotional ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and playbills, souvenir booklets, tickets, die-cut cards, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. The collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American theater and the evolution of advertising strategies for the performing arts in the United States in the late 19th century. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in printmaking, and of the artists, engravers, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
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Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Circus Prints and Ephemera
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Circus Prints and Ephemera contains more than 850 printed items that relate to circuses in the United States from the 1846 to the 1990s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations produced for or pertaining to circuses, their tours and shows, staff and performers, acts and exhibits, and animals. Materials are arranged in three series: small-size prints and ephemera (11 x 14 inches or less); large-size prints and ephemera (more than 11 x 14 inches); and broadsides and handbills. The small-size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name; and the broadsides and handbills contain item-level entries that include the circus name, date, printer (when identified), and show location (when applicable). The collection has 220 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic posters containing brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, and animals that were typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. Small-size items in the collection number more than 500 and are comprised mainly of advertising and promotion ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and souvenir books, route cards, envelopes, tickets, songsters, and printed billheads and letterheads. The 130 broadsides, handbills, and related advertisements consist primarily of long, narrow broadsides printed on newspaper paper in black ink using letterpress type that advertised upcoming circus shows and were intended to be distributed by hand, left in stacks in public places, or posted on walls, fences, or in windows in advance of the circus's arrival in a town. This collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American circus and its impact on popular entertainment and advertising in the 19th and 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of the development of printmaking techniques and trends, and of the artists, engraves, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
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Jay T. Last collection of entertainment: Schaefer's Opera House business correspondence
Visual Materials
The Schaefer's Opera House business correspondence, a subset within the Jay T. Last collection of entertainment prints and ephemera, contains records of the Schaefer's Opera House entertainment venue of Canton, Ohio, from approximately 1867 to 1890. Approximately 420 items are housed in 4 binders, and focus on venue booking agreements for various entertainment acts and productions, including commission percentages, dates, and other terms. The materials are predominantly correspondences, but ephemera such as reciepts and tickets are also included. The opera house contracts specify the percentages of gross receipts received by the show managers and the opera house for "each and every performance," and sometimes list what each party will furnish as part of the signed agreement. That list for the house could include: a lighted, heated and cleaned theater or hall, stage men, stage furniture, ushers, bill posting and distributing, ticket sellers, and advance sales; and for the managers: the company, entertainment and perishable properties, an orchestra and conductor, door tenders, and "all printing necessary for the proper advertisement of the entertainment."
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Jay T. Last collection of travel and exploration prints and ephemera
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last collection of travel and exploration prints and ephemera contains about 1,190 printed materials related to the history of hotels, resorts, luggage companies, and maps in the United States. The materials date from approximately 1814 to approximately 1937, although the bulk of the materials date from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. The collection consists of 50 large-sized items, and over a thousand smaller-sized items, including trade cards, postcards, booklets, billheads, and letterheads. Many of the prints include views and promotional maps created by hotel and resort proprietors from New York City, Boston, and Chicago. Images on some of the prints trace the history of vacation destinations in the United States, predominately of beaches near Coney Island, ranging from Locust Grove to Starin's Glen Island, Dreamland, Luna Park, and more. The prints also contain images of elevated street views, storefronts, pedestrians traveling to hotels, and people at their leisure at beaches and amusement parks. A few prints also include promotional information about amenities, services, medical treatments, and local excursions offered by the various establishments. A large portion of materials in this collection are printed maps, varying from ornamental pictorial maps about U.S history and western expansion, to pocket maps created by hotel proprietors, real estate agents, government departments, and local businesses. While predominantly mapping locations within New York and Massachusetts, many of the maps also cover regions in California, documenting land development, fire-safety plans, and real-estate advertisements in Fresno, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. A few of the maps in this collection also provide exploration routes and information on locating gold mines in California, Colorado, and Alaska. Information on the maps include topographic details, timetables for travel destinations, and document travel routes by rail or ferry. A smaller portion of this collection also consists of images of luggage, trunk, travel bag, and valise products advertised by manufacturers from Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Newark, and more.
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Jay T. Last Collection of Fashion: Honig & Schutter Business Correspondence
Visual Materials
The Honig & Schutter business correspondence, a subset within the Jay T. Last Collection of Fashion Prints and Ephemera, contains approximately 65 items that date from 1884 to 1890. The collection features billheads and related items sent to Honig & Schutter of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, that document merchandise for men and children purchased for resale by the company, including clothing; headwear; footwear; and accessories such as men's collars, cuffs, neckwear, handkerchiefs, and gloves. Over 35 wholesale dealers are represented in the collection. The materials include predominantly handwritten billheads from a variety of businesses in and around the northeastern United States, particularly New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Some billheads have engraved or lithographed images of commercial buildings, although the majority contain only text.
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Jay T. Last Collection of Transportation: Railroad Passes
Visual Materials
The railroad passes in the Jay T. Last Collection of Transportation consist of over 3,000 railroad passes issued primarily by American railroad companies to individuals in the 19th and 20th centuries. The passes provided the pass holder with permission to ride on the railroad, usually through the end of the calendar year, and the passes in the collection bear a variety of titles including annual pass, season ticket, time pass, free ticket, exchange ticket, and complimentary ticket. The bulk of the collection dates from 1860 to 1960, but among the earliest passes in the collection is one issued by the Schenectady and Troy Railroad in 1848; one of the most recent items is a 1980 pass for the homemade narrow-gauge Anacortes Railway. The passes typically contain printed text with the railroad company's name, rules governing the use of the pass, and year, with spaces to be filled in with the pass holder's name and affiliation (often another railroad company), the pass number, and the authorizing signature of an executive of the railroad such as the president, superintendent, or secretary. Most of the passes in the collection are filled out in manuscript, or are typewritten in the 20th century, though some are blank. The passes average 2 ¼ x 4 inches in size and are typically printed on cardstock of varying colors, and many include multiple-color printing. The decorative details of the passes vary across the collection, though most examples from the late 19th century and early 20th centuries contain engraved or lithographed designs and images. Visual decorations include patterned borders and scrollwork, logos, and vignettes primarily with transportation-related images such as railroad locomotives and trains, as well as buildings, views of landscapes, rivers and bridges, and wilderness scenes, and animals. Some passes have printed maps or pass conditions and rules printed on the card verso. American railroad companies issued the majority of passes primarily for annual travel on commercial passenger lines. Among the anomalies in the collection are passes of interurban electric lines, foreign railroad companies, primarily from Canada and Latin America countries, such as passes of the Ferrocarril Mexicano, a 1934 pass of the South Manchurian Railway, a 1936 pass for the Liverpool Overhead Railway, as well as a 1861 blank form providing passage for Illinois State Troops by the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and a United States Railroad Administration 1921 pass for William C. Curtin, an accountant in the Office of the Comptroller, with his photograph pasted on the verso. Many of the passes include a printer credit line, and well over a hundred different printers are named on the passes. A sampling of some of the printing companies more heavily represented in the collection include the American Bank Note Company of New York; the Bailey, Banks & Biddle Company of Philadelphia; Calvert Lithographing Company of Detroit; the Courier-Journal Engraving Company of Louisville, Kentucky; Gast of St. Louis; Hosford & Sons of New York; Maverick, Stephan & Company of New York; Poole Brothers of Chicago; Rand, Avery & Company of Boston; Rand, McNally & Company of Chicago; S.C. Toof & Company of Memphis; the Western Bank Note Company of Chicago, and Woodward, Tiernan & Hale of St. Louis.
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