In the 1940s, Curtis also had a comic book imprint, Novelty Press. The company declined in the later 20th century, and its publications were sold or discontinued. It now exists as Curtis Licensing, which licenses images of and from Curtis magazine covers and artwork.
The Curtis Publishing Company was founded in 1891 by publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis, who published the People's Ledger, a news magazine he launched in Boston in 1872, and then moved to Philadelphia, which was a major publishing center in the nation, four years later, in 1876. Curtis established the Tribune and Farmer in 1879. Curtis' wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, developed a women's section to the magazine and the Ladies' Home Journal, which she edited from 1883 to 1889, all of which became part of Curtis Publishing Company.
In 1897, Curtis bought The Saturday Evening Post for $1000, and developed it into one of the nation's most popular periodicals.[1]
Curtis Publishing created a market research division in 1911 under Charles Coolidge Parlin.[2] The goal of the division was to understand their customers and was one of the first market research firms.[3]
Curtis reported record earnings of $21 million on $84 million in revenue in 1929.[4]
Curtis spun off their market research division, National Analysts, as an independent organization to provide market research services to business and government.[5]
In 1946, Curtis Publishing launched Holiday magazine, focusing on travel and photo essays.[6]
The emergence of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s competed for people's attention and eroded the popularity of general-interest periodicals such as the Post and the Journal.[4]The New York Times reported that both the finance markets and Madison Avenue were watching Curtis Publishing's efforts to save itself after a financial decline.[4] The reason the New York Times gave for the attention, "the status of the venerable Curtis empire, the colorful cast of characters directing the comeback attempt, the vast sums of money at stake. In addition, Curtis's troubles seemed to reflect the difficulties encountered by the mass magazines industry as a whole in adjusting to an era dominated by the spiraling growth of television."[4] It wasn't until 1961 and 1962 that the struggle became evident in lost revenue.[4]
In 1961, Curtis Publishing president Robert A. MacNeal announced that the company had lost money for the first time in the more than seven decades since its incorporation.[7] The company's financials showed a loss of $4,194,000 on $178.4 million in revenue that year.[4] The following year, in 1962,[4] company had total revenues of $149 million and a loss of $18.9 million.[4] Curtis management went to Serge Semenenko who had helped the Hearst Corporation to reorganize and Semenenko arranged for a six-bank syndicate to loan $10.5 million to Curtis.[4]
Many experts wrote of multiple issues tied to the decline of Curtis. Many of their competitors such as Time, Inc. and McCall Corporation had diversified while Curtis remained focused on their two key periodicals, The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal. Their other magazines, Holiday, Jack & Jill, and American, could not make up the lost revenue of the main periodicals. The Saturday Evening Post had been surpassed by Life magazine as the top mass market periodical in 1942 and then spiraled into a ten-year decline in advertising revenue after World War II.
Ladies' Home Journal lost its position to McCall's in 1960. Other experts said that the two flagship magazines "simply grew old."[4] Curtis "fell into a formula that tended to attract older readers rather than the young married couples that advertisers wanted to reach."[4] They also stayed away from the more aggressive circulation promotions used by their competitors.[4] Matthew J. Culligan, President of Curtis, cited another financial drag from using its own presses and paper. Culligan said, "This sort of self-sufficiency is fine in good times but it imposes an intolerable burden when business goes bad."[4] They had also failed to follow the model of some of their competitors by diversifying into television, news magazines or book publishing after World War II.[4]
Ben Hibbs, the editor of The Saturday Evening Post since 1942, retired, as did Bruce and Beatrice Gould of the Ladies' Home Journal (editors since 1935).[4] The Post attempted to reinvent itself with more controversial articles and flashy graphics. Two editors, Robert Fouss of the Saturday Evening Post, and Curtiss Anderson of Ladies' Home Journal, quickly came and went.[4]Ted Patrick, editor of Holiday magazine, said that aggressive cost-cutting would be the kiss of death to Holiday.[8]
Curtis received another loan of $5.5 million in 1964 to be used to make investments in new editorial properties.[9]
Perfect Film loaned the company $5 million in 1968 at the request of Curtis's primary loan holder, First National Bank of Boston, to extend its loans. Curtis sold its Philadelphia headquarters to real estate developer John W. Merriam for $7.3 million to pay off most of the First National loan; it leased half of the building back for its operations.[10]
In 1968, Curtis Publishing sold the Ladies' Home Journal and The American Home to Downe Communications for $5.4 million in stock;[11][12] it sold the stock for operating revenue. The list of six million Post subscribers was sold to Life for cash, a $2.5 million loan, and a contract with Curtis' circulation and printing services subsidiaries. Despite these attempts to revive the Saturday Evening Post, and failing to find a purchaser for the magazine, Curtis Publishing shut it down in 1969.[13] In March 1969, the Federal Trade Commission directed Curtis to offer cash refunds for unfulfilled portions of Post subscriptions.[14]
In 1976, The Saturday Evening Post Society was spun off from Curtis to resume publication of its flagship magazine. U.S. Kids was formed, which publishes their portfolio of children's magazines.[15]
21st century
In the 21st century, Curtis Publishing licenses magazine covers and artwork from their archive of 4,000 images from over 500 artists. As Curtis Licensing, they provide images for advertising and to companies creating and selling memorabilia. The company's Norman Rockwell cover paintings and other images have been used for fine art and prints, greeting cards, figurines, and other collectibles.[16]
In 1910, the company built its headquarters building at the intersection of South Sixth and Walnut Streets about 200 feet (61m) southwest of Independence Hall. The offices and press building and the company's warehouse[17]) was designed by Edgar Viguers Seeler (1867–1929) in the Beaux Arts style. The square-block building stretches from South Sixth to South Seventh Street east to west, and from Sansom Street to Walnut Street north to south. The building was renovated in 1990 by Oldham and Seltz and John Milner Associates.[18][19]
The interior of the building features a terraced waterfall and fountain, an atrium with faux-Egyptian palm trees, and the 15-by-49-foot (4.6m ×14.9m) glass-mosaic Dream Garden, designed by Maxfield Parrish and made by Louis Tiffany and Tiffany Studios in 1916.[19] The glass-mosaic work was commissioned by Edward Bok, who was the Senior Editor of the company at the time. It was exhibited at Tiffany Studios in New York City for a month before being installed in the building's lobby, which took six months. The mosaic is made of 100,000 pieces of hand-fixed Favrile glass in 260 different colors.[20]
In 1998, the mosaic was sold to casino owner Steve Wynn, who intended to move it to one of his casinos in Las Vegas. This was blocked by local historians and art lovers, who raised $3.5 million to purchase the work and prevent its being moved from the city.[21] The money was provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which now owns the work.[20]
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination of the three.
Ladies' Home Journal was an American magazine last published by the Meredith Corporation. It was first published on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. In 1891, it was published in Philadelphia by the Curtis Publishing Company. In 1903, it was the first American magazine to reach one million subscribers.
The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines among the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week.
Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis was an American publisher of magazines and newspapers, including the Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post.
Edward William Bok was a Dutch-born American editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was editor of the Ladies' Home Journal for 30 years (1889–1919). He also distributed popular homebuilding plans and created Bok Tower Gardens in central Florida.
Elizabeth Shippen Green was an American illustrator. She illustrated children's books and worked for publications such as The Ladies' Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Magazine.
Chilton Company is a former publishing company, most famous for its trade magazines, and automotive manuals. It also provided conference and market research services to a wide variety of industries. Chilton grew from a small publisher of a single magazine to a leading publisher of business-to-business magazines, consumer and professional automotive manuals, craft and hobby books, and a large, well-known marketing research company.
The Public Ledger was a daily newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published from March 25, 1836, to January 1942. Its motto was "Virtue, Liberty, and Independence". It was Philadelphia's most widely-circulated newspaper for a period, but its circulation began declining in the mid-1930s. The newspaper also operated a syndicate, the Ledger Syndicate, from 1915 until 1946.
Mary Louise Curtis was the founder of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She was the only child of the magazine and newspaper magnate Cyrus H. K. Curtis and Louisa Knapp Curtis, the founder and editor of the Ladies' Home Journal.
Louisa Knapp Curtis, , was an American columnist and the first editor of the Ladies' Home Journal from 1883 to 1889. It became one of the most popular magazines published in the United States and reached a circulation of one million within ten years. Curtis turned over the editorship to Edward Bok in 1889 but she continued to author a column and provide oversight.
Holiday was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977, whose circulation grew to more than one million subscribers at its height. The magazine employed writers such as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Lawrence Durell, James Michener, and E. B. White.
NAXION previously known as National Analysts Worldwide, is an American marketing research company that originally worked as a division of the Curtis Publishing Company. It was founded by Charles Coolidge Parlin in 1911. Donald M. Hobart, future head of the division, joined in 1923, though he ended up resigning from the company in 1928 because he desired to work on the selling side of the concept. He was asked to rejoin the company and become the head of the division in 1938 after Parlin had decided to retire. It is considered to be the "first commercial research company" ever formed. It became an independent organization in 1943 in order to "provide research services to industry and government."
Martin S. Ackerman was a lawyer and businessman known for mergers and acquisitions.
Curtis Circulation Company, LLC is a magazine distribution company.
Frances Tipton Hunter was an illustrator who created covers for The Saturday Evening Post and many other magazines between the 1920s and 1950s. Her work is very similar in style to that of Norman Rockwell.
Washington Avenue Historic District, or Washington Avenue Factory District, is a national historic district located in the Hawthorne and Bella Vista neighborhoods of South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It comprises the remaining four blocks of one of the last industrial neighborhoods in Philadelphia, and encompasses eight contributing buildings built between 1889 and 1927:
George Ericson (1893–1936), who worked under the name Eugene Iverd, was an American illustrator, teacher, and painter.
Ralph Pallen Coleman was an American painter and illustrator. His career spanned more than half a century during which he illustrated stories for many magazines, and later, religious illustrations and paintings which provided images of Christianity to millions of people during the 1950s–1960s. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he grew up and lived there throughout his 75 years.
The Pennsylvania Evening Post was the first daily newspaper published in the United States, and was produced by Benjamin Towne from 1775 to 1783. It was also the first newspaper to publish the United States Declaration of Independence.
Edwin Hill Patrick was the key American editor for Holiday, an influential travel and literary magazine published by the Curtis Publishing Company. Under Patrick's editorship from 1946 and until his death in 1964, the magazine published 215 issues and grew circulation to one million subscribers. The magazine published many famous authors including James Michener, E. B. White, Truman Capote and Lawrence Durell. Patrick was also the founding Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors.
↑ Bedingfield, R. E. "Curtis Publishing Sells 2 Magazines; Downe Paying $5.4-Million in Stock", The New York Times, August 15, 1968, Business and Finance section, p. 54.
↑ "Too Few Believers." Time. Friday, Aug. 23, 1968.
1 2 Welles, Chris (Feb 10, 1969). "Post-Mortem". New York Magazine. pp.32–36. Retrieved 5 August 2011.
↑ Gallery, John Andrew, ed. (2004), Philadelphia Architecture: A Guide to the City (2nded.), Philadelphia: Foundation for Architecture, ISBN0962290815 , p.161
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