Posting bills in San Francisco in the 1890s

This photo is of Siebe and Green, who were bill posters in San Francisco, California in the 1890s. I found it on the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions) and if it seems a bit puzzling to you that they were bill posters, I think that I can explain. I've always had a fascination with advertising, and graphic design.

Nowadays when you hear the word "bill" you think of something that you may have gotten in the mail, which means that you owe money. But in the days of Siebe and Green (I'm not sure which one was which), a "bill" also meant something that nowadays we'd call a "flyer". And by the 1890s these giant "flyers" were being printed, and were plastered up all over the place, on walls, on the sides of barns, on fences, you name it. It was called "posting bills", and if you're old enough, you may remember seeing things stenciled on walls that said "Post No Bills". It had really become a mess by the 20th Century, and cities passed laws to control it.

Posted bills were the "pop up ads" of the day. They were big business, and serious eyesores, especially since they were just left up until they fell down in tatters. At least the ads on your computer don't fall down and make a mess all over the city streets! There was someone who had to clean up the mess, along with the messes left by horses, but it cost the city, and the taxpayers, a lot. So this kind of thing didn't last very long. Let's take a look at the bills that were posted.

Behind the Duke watermark you can read: Kidneys, Liver and Bowels, Cleanses the system effectually, overcomes habitual constipation permanently; Buy the genuine - manf'd [manufactured] by California Fig Syrup C__; __t of Business, __ng Monday Jan 4th, Loans - Suits etc- , (I think that the next line says Two days at a tremendous sacrifice); and then there's a picture of an orchestra.

I get a big kick out of these old ads, and they would look great in my garage, but you gotta remember that back then they were as welcome as any ad is today, that is, they were eyesores.

Post no bills!



If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more