Curtis Publishing Company facts for kids
The November 28, 1903 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, published by Curtis Publishing Company
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| Industry | Publishing |
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| Founded | 1891 |
| Founder | Cyrus H. K. Curtis |
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United States
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| Products | Magazines |
| Services | Advertising |
The Curtis Publishing Company was a very important publisher in the United States. It started in 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For many years in the early 1900s, it was one of the biggest and most powerful publishing companies.
Curtis Publishing made many popular magazines. These included the Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post. Other magazines were The American Home, Holiday, Jack & Jill, and Country Gentleman. In the 1940s, Curtis also published comic books under the name Novelty Press.
Later in the 20th century, the company faced challenges. Many of its magazines were sold or stopped being published. Today, the company is called Curtis Licensing. It now sells licenses for images from old Curtis magazine covers and artwork.
Contents
History of Curtis Publishing
How it All Started (1800s)
The Curtis Publishing Company was started by Cyrus H. K. Curtis in 1891. Before that, Cyrus Curtis had already been a publisher for many years. He started a news magazine called People's Ledger in Boston in 1872. He moved his business to Philadelphia in 1876. Philadelphia was a major center for publishing at that time.
In 1879, Curtis started a magazine called Tribune and Farmer. His wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, created a special section for women in this magazine. This women's section became so popular that it turned into its own magazine, the Ladies' Home Journal. Louisa Knapp Curtis was the editor of this new magazine from 1883 to 1889. Both magazines became part of the Curtis Publishing Company.
In 1897, Cyrus Curtis bought The Saturday Evening Post for $1,000. He worked hard to make it one of the most popular magazines in the country. This magazine actually had a long history. It started from Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette, which began in 1728.
When Curtis bought the Post, it only had 2,000 subscribers. By 1906, it had over one million subscribers! By 1960, it had more than six million. The editor, George Horace Lorimer, brought in famous writers and artists. This helped create "America's Golden Age of Illustration." Many well-known artists, like Norman Rockwell, J. C. Leyendecker, and John Clymer, had their work featured on the covers.
Changes in the 1900s
In 1911, Curtis Publishing started a special department to understand its customers better. This was one of the first groups to do "market research" to find out what people wanted.
In 1946, Curtis Publishing launched a new magazine called Holiday. This magazine focused on travel and beautiful photo stories.
However, things started to change for magazines in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Television became very popular and started to take people's attention away from general magazines like the Post and the Journal. This caused problems for Curtis Publishing.
In 1961, the company announced it had lost money for the first time in over 70 years. Many experts tried to figure out why Curtis was struggling. Other publishing companies, like Time, Inc., had started publishing different kinds of magazines or even gone into television. But Curtis stayed focused on its two main magazines.
Some people said that the two main magazines, The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal, "simply grew old." They attracted older readers, but advertisers wanted to reach young couples. Curtis also owned its own printing presses and paper mills. This was good when business was strong, but it became a big problem when sales went down.
To try and save the company, Curtis sold some of its magazines. In 1968, it sold the Ladies' Home Journal and The American Home. It also sold its list of six million Post subscribers to Life magazine. Even with these efforts, Curtis Publishing could not find a buyer for The Saturday Evening Post. So, the company stopped publishing it in 1969.
Later, in 1976, a new group called The Saturday Evening Post Society was created. This group started publishing The Saturday Evening Post magazine again. They also started U.S. Kids, which publishes magazines for children.
Curtis Today (2000s)
Today, Curtis Publishing is known as Curtis Licensing. It uses its huge collection of old magazine covers and artwork. They have about 4,000 images from over 500 artists. Curtis Licensing provides these images for advertising and to companies that make and sell souvenirs. For example, Norman Rockwell's famous cover paintings and other images have been used for art prints, greeting cards, and other collectibles.
| Curtis Publishing Company | |
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Dream Garden, a glass-mosaic mural by Maxfield Parrish and made by Louis Comfort Tiffany
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| Location | 170 S. Independence Mall West, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
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Philadelphia Register of Historic Places
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| Designated | November 30, 1998 |
The Curtis Center and Dream Garden
In 1910, the Curtis Publishing Company built its main office building in Philadelphia. It is located near Independence Hall. The building was designed by Edgar Viguers Seeler in a style called Beaux Arts. It takes up an entire city block.
Inside the building, there is a beautiful glass-mosaic mural called Dream Garden. It is about 15 feet tall and 49 feet wide. The famous artist Maxfield Parrish designed it, and Louis Tiffany and Tiffany Studios made it in 1916. The mural is made of 100,000 pieces of special glass in 260 different colors.
In 1998, someone tried to buy the mosaic and move it to Las Vegas. But local historians and art lovers worked together to stop this. They raised $3.5 million to buy the artwork and keep it in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts now owns this amazing piece of art.
See also
- Curtis Hall Arboretum, a former estate of the Curtis family
