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History of the Detroit Publishing Company

The Detroit Photographic Company is first noted in city registers of Detroit in 1888. The company supplied photographs for all purposes - especially for use in books, magazines, and advertising specialties such as calendars and blotters. Many of the prints were of large framing size or suitable for long advertising hangers in the custom of the day. However, the small company's specialty was religious material of the Madonna type.

On December 17, 1895, the Photochrom Company of Detroit filed incorporation papers with the State of Michigan. The company was launched as a photographic publishing firm by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, son of the shipping, banking, and publishing magnate William Livingstone, Jr., and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher, whose backers included Photoglob AG of Zurich, Switzerland. Although officially maintaining the Photochrom Company name, the company was known as the Detroit Photographic Company from 1898 until 1906 when it went by the name of the Detroit Publishing Company.

At the urging of Husher, Livingstone began investigating a little known and unique photo-reproduction process called Photochrom for converting black-and-white photographs to color prints by photolithography that had been invented and patented by the PhotoGlob company in Zurich in the late 1880s. During the summer of 1897 he went to Zurich and succeeded in arranging a contract with the Swiss owners by which he obtained exclusive ownership and rights to the Photochrom process in America which became later known as Aäc. With the high-quality photographs made in a variety of locations, this process permitted the mass production of color postcards, prints, and albums for sale to the American market. Most depict scenes in the United States (chiefly east of the Mississippi), together with some photographs of other nations in the Americas, Europe, and copies of paintings. Prominent subjects include buildings and views in towns and cities, colleges and universities, battleships and yachts, resorts, natural landmarks, and industry.

Concurrently in 1897, the United States Congress authorized the One Penny Postcard. William Livingstone immediately saw the lucrative potential of the souvenir postcard illustrated with color photographs, a field in which he had the means to be a pioneer.

The company managers on the step of their factory at the corner of Vermont and Alexandrine in Detroit, about 1910. William A. Livingstone stands far left, his brother Robert B. Livingstone is third from the left. William H. Jackson stands in the center holding a hat.

William Henry Jackson

At the urging of Husher, Livingstone invited "America's greatest landscape photographer" William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) to join his Detroit company as a partner. Jackson had moved to Nebraska after the Civil War and was active in the West from about 1870 to about 1890. His photographs for the U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories (not included in the Library of Congress collection) influenced the establishment of Yellowstone and other early national parks. Accepting the offer, Jackson joined the company in 1898 as president, bringing with him an estimated 10,000 negatives which provided the core of the company's photographic archives, from which they produced pictures ranging from postcards to mammoth-plate panoramas. The Spanish American War which was also underway gained the nation's fervent interest. The expansion of U.S. naval power accounted for the firm's large inventory of photographs of Cuba and scenes related to the war and for the hundreds of images of warships.

In 1903, Jackson he became the plant manager, thus leaving him with less time to travel and take photographs. In 1906 (or 5), the firm changed its name from the Detroit Photographic Co. to the Detroit Publishing Company.

In the 1910s, the publishing firm expanded its inventory to include photographic copies of works of art, which were popular educational tools as well as inexpensive home decor. During its height, the Detroit Publishing Company drew upon 40,000 negatives for its publishing effort, and had sales of seven million prints annually. Traveling salesmen, mail order catalogues, and a few retail stores aggressively sold the company's products. The company maintained outlets in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Zurich, and also sold their images at popular tourist spots and through the mail. At the height of its success, the company employed some forty artisans and a dozen or more traveling salesmen. In a typical year they would publish an estimated seven million prints.

With the declining sale of photographs and postcards during World War I, and the introduction of new and cheaper printing methods used by competing firms, the Detroit Publishing Company went into receivership in 1924. Jackson moved to Washington, D.C., where he produced murals of the Old West for the new U.S. Department of the Interior building. He also acted as a technical advisor for the filming of Gone with the Wind.

Jackson returned to New York in 1929 assuming the position of research director for the Oregon Trail Memorial Association and worked until he turned 99 when he died from complications from a hip fracture. Recognized as one of the last surviving Civil War veterans, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division (New York City) holds Jackson's diaries from the 1870s through his retirement, including diaries from the World's Transportation Commission trip and Jackson's years with the Detroit Publishing Company.

The Company Assets

The company’s New York City retail outlet at 218 5th Avenue, about 1900. Photographed by Henry G. Peabody.

In Jackson's time, photographers frequently purchased and sold negatives among themselves, with the current holder of the negative claiming authorship. The Detroit Publishing Company collection included negatives by not only William Henry Jackson, but also the work of many other photographers, including Hans Behm, Joseph Byron, Clarence M. Darling, Lycurgus S. Glover, Edward Hart, Clarence S. Jackson, John S. Johnston, B.F. Mills, Henry Greenwood Peabody, George Prince, William H. Rau, E.L. Schreck, and Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins; as well as three photographers identified only by last name: Bowen, McCormick, and Taylor.

The Detroit Publishing Co.'s assets were liquidated in 1932. In 1936, Edsel Ford backed by his father Henry Ford bought Jackson's 40,000 negatives from the estate of Robert B. Livingstone for "The Edison Institute" known today as Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. At the insistence of William H. Jackson's son, Clarence, a decade later the museum donated the negatives to the Colorado Historical Society but kept the prints. In 1949, the Edison Institute gave all of the negatives and many duplicate photographs to the Colorado Historical Society. The Colorado Historical Society retained the views west of the Mississippi River, but donated the negatives of Eastern United States and foreign views to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. later that year.

See also:

Photochrom Process and Collections

Sources:

Text - http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/202_detr.html

http://www.photochrom.com/
Image - http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/history/managers.asp

External link:

The Henry Ford Museum - Photographer to the World - http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/