Shop Sign as Landmark

September 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Boston Evening-Post (September 19, 1774).

“Next Door to Dr. Daniel Scott’s, at the Sign of the Leopard.”

In the fall of 1774, William Breck ran an advertisement “to inform his Friends and Customers” that he had moved to a new location.  They would no longer find him at his shop “at the Golden Key, in Ann-street” but instead at a shop “near the Hay-Market, next Door to Dr. Daniel Scott’s at the Sign of the Leopard, South-End of BOSTON.”  Even though he moved, he “continues to sell, as usual, A general Assortment of Hard-Ware GOODS … at the lowest Prices.”

Breck’s advertisement documented some of the visual culture of commerce that residents and visitors encountered as they traversed the streets of the busy port.  Both devices, the Golden Key and the Sign of the Leopard, had also circulated more widely via other media.  Breck distributed an engraved trade card that included an image of an ornate key suspended within a cartouche above a list of the merchandise he stocked “at the Golden Key near the draw-Bridge.”  Paul Revere produced the trade card in the late 1760s, yet Breck might have given out copies well into the 1770s.  (Mary Symonds, a milliner in Philadelphia, commissioned a similar trade card in 1768.  She wrote a receipted bill on the back of one of them in 1770.)  Breck’s advertisement ran on its own in the September 22 edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, but it just happened to appear immediately below Scott’s advertisement for his “Medicine Store” at “the Sign of the LEOPARD” featuring a woodcut depicting a leopard in the September 19 edition of the Boston Evening-Post.  That image had been circulating in that newspaper for several months, making the Sign of the Leopard an attractive option when Breck decided to include a familiar landmark to help orient customers to his new location.

Breck did not mention whether the Golden Key moved with him or remained as a fixture on Ann Street, marking the location for the next tenant in his former shop.  He had previously made quite an investment in associating the image with his business.  Engraved trade cards, after all, were much more expensive than newspaper advertisements, handbills, and broadsides.  Did he surrender an aspect of the branding associated with his business for many years when he relocated?

February 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette (February 4, 1771).

“Next Door to the THREE DOVES.”

In an advertisement in the supplement that accompanied the February 4, 1771, edition of the Boston-Gazette, Thomas Knight advised prospective customers that he sold window glass and bottles “at the Three Kings in Cornhill.”  A short notice in the standard issue informed the public that the “Sale of Sugars, which was advertised to be at the Bunch of Grapes To-Morrow, is postpon’d.”  John Boyles advertised several dozen books in the supplement, listing the titles in two columns.  He also made reference to a shop sign in order to direct readers to his location.  The bookseller gave his location as “Next Door to the THREE DOVES, In Marlborough-Street, Boston.”

Like other major urban ports, Boston did not adopt street numbers until the very end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.  Prior to that, advertisers and others resorted to a variety of means of describing locations.  For instance, they indicated street names and mentioned nearby landmarks.  Shop signs also helped when giving directions, not only for those at the locations marked by the signs but also for others in close proximity.  Boyles apparently had not commissioned his own sign for his bookshop, but that did not prevent him from using a sign affiliated with another business as a landmark for finding his location.

Some proprietors deployed their shop signs as brands representing their businesses, regularly naming them in their newspaper advertisements and sometimes inserting woodcuts depicting them.  The most ambitious eighteenth-century advertisers also distributed trade cards and billheads that made reference to their shop signs and included images.  Yet other entrepreneurs considered those shop signs a form of public property rather than the sole domain of the businesses they marked.  Boyles, for instance, did not seem to believe that the Three Doves belonged exclusively to his neighbor’s business.  He appropriated the shop sign in his own marketing efforts, using it as an efficient means of directing his own customers to his bookshop.