Series I. Firefighting Prints and Ephemera (small size)

This series contains more than 160 small-size printed items that pertain to firefighting and the activities and organizations of firemen in the United States from approximately 1820 to 1909. The items consist of business records and advertising and promotional materials produced for or pertaining to firefighting organizations, related social or charitable events, and firefighting vehicles, equipment, and supplies.

The entities represented in these materials include fire departments, engine and hose companies, relief funds, veterans' associations, and firefighting vehicle, equipment, and supply manufacturers such as engine works and pump and hose manufacturers. Item types consist of printed booklets, trade cards, small programs, menus, tickets and invitations for charitable and social events such balls, concerts, musters, and celebrations, business cards, lapel ribbons, book and periodical illustrations, membership certificates, and stationery with printed billheads and letterheads filled out in manuscript. Many of these items are decorated with images that include depictions of firefighters assembling for duty and responding to alarms, fighting fires, and rescuing victims; views of burning and damaged buildings, and ruins amid flames, rubble, and smoke; and images of firefighting vehicles and equipment including steam fire engines, manual fire engines, hook and ladder trucks, hose carriages, fire hydrants, hoses, ladders, preventers, axes, and speaking trumpets.

While most of the materials date from the second half of the 19th century, among the earliest items in the collection is a circa 1820 engraving of a fire pumper that advertises the Philadelphia firm of Sellers & Pennock Patent River Hose, Fire Bucket and Hydraulion Manufacturers. Also of note are four small lithographs of parade floats carrying New York City firefighters and fire engines that were printed by Anthony Imbert of New York City and published in 1826 as part of an appendix to the 1825 Memoir by Cadwallader D. Colden commemorating the New York celebration of the opening of the Erie Canal. Later items include an 1886 booklet for the Veteran Firemen's Association annual ball held at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, containing multiple pages of advertisements and illustrations for firefighting apparatus and related services interspersed with four images of historic New York City fires; and twelve color covers with images of "Young Wide Awake" in firefighting scenes from the Wide Awake Weekly dime-novel/penny-dreadful series that was published by Frank Tousey between 1906 and 1909.