Streetcar Advertising in America

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 250 of them are included in this book 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. Investors might do well to review this book to see which companies are still producing these popular products and brands as they represent some of the most successful businesses in America today.REVIEWS As a longtime trolley museum motorman, I have often observed the interest our passengers show in the vintage interior advertisements above the windows, the car cards. Now there s a book on the history of car cards that fills a gap in the literature. Woodson Savage has been collecting car cards and researching their history...After relating the history of car cards, the majority of the book is devoted to a colorful gallery of the cards themselves. The color and reproduction on coated paper are excellent. Most of them are national brands, many of which survive today. The galleries are divided into product types, with histories of these ad campaigns. Savage s personal collection can be viewed online at fineartamerica.com/artists/Woodson Savage. Savage has joined the Western Railway Museum, and is working with them to catalog and scan their 900-card collection....the book is well produced, fun to browse through and may deserve a place in your museum store.Tourist Railroads & Railway Museums, The Magazine of ATRRM.