practicum magazine 9

PB / DESiGN ROOTS: NEW ENGLAND 1 / DESiGN ROOTS:

NEW ENGLAND

CONTENTS

CreditsRight Now

ARCHITECTUREThe Jackson HouseWalter Gropius

FASHIONLife is GoodLL Bean Alfred Fiandaca

PUBLISHINGBay Psalms BookBoston HeraldPublick OccurencesWilliam Lloyd GarrisonWIlliam Dwiggins

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new england

RIGHT NOW!

MBTA

BEn & Jerry’s

I do not claim the rights to any of the pictures or text within this magazine un-less specified otherwisre. All images and text are used as an educational tool

for my senior practicum project. The Jackson House:

Text is taken from historicalnewengland.com

The Gropius House: Text is taken from historicalnewengland.com

All photos minus the full house photo and the photo of Walter Gropius are mine. The two other photos are provided by the Historical New England Society.

Life Is Good:Text is from lifeisgood.com

All photos are taken from facebook.com/lifeisgood.LLBean:

Everything is taken from llbean.comAlfred Fiandaca:

Text is from bostonglobe.comThe pictures of his clothing are taken from alfredfiandaca.com. The portrait of

Alfred is from bostonglobe.comBay Psalms Book:

All pictures are from the Boston Public Library’s Flickr page.The Boston Herald:

Text is from heraldmedia.comThe photos are from ?

Publick Occurences:The main text is from historybuff.com.

The “Did you know” text information is taken from webpmt.usps.gov.The text about The Boston Newsletter is from earlyamerica.com

The pictures of publick occurences are from masshist.orgThe photo of the Boston Newsletter is from?

William Garrison/The Liberator:The text is from pbs.org

William Addison Dwiggins:The text is from lawsonarchives.com


NEW ENGLAND

ARCHITECTURE


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ARCHITECTURE

The Jackson House, the oldest timber-framed dwelling in New Hampshire, was constructed with sawn lumber in the mid-seventeenth century. Richard Jackson, a cooper among other things, situated his house above the North Mill Pond which, when it was built, was “on the other side of Strawbery Banke Creek.” Richard owned twenty-five acres, which he merged with the adjoining twenty-five acres owned by his father-in-law. The house was built with vertical planks that run from the sill to the plate. There are no studs supporting the walls, only the window openings. The roof pairs rafters with the major posts, collar beams, and purlins to support vertical roof boards. The first-floor ceiling and second floors and ceiling are supported with impressive summer beams, complete with chamfered edges with lamb’s tongue stops.

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THE JACKSON HOUSE

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By: Historical New England

ARCHITECTURE

http://www.historicnewengland.org/historic-properties/homes/Gropius%20House/gropius-house-history

The Gropius House in Lincoln, Mas-sachusetts, was built in 1938 by German architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). He was thirty-five years

old when he was appointed director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar, Germany. Bauhaus is taken from two German words: bauen (to build) and Haus (house), and translated means “House of Building,” an idea Gropius took from medieval craft guilds. Gropius was director of the Bauhaus from its founding in 1919 until 1928.

The attitude of the Bauhaus toward design was all-embracing, encouraging collabora-tion and taking into consideration not only the individual object or building but also the larger context, the community, and the environment.

Training required students to study the fine arts, to learn the skills of a craft, to under-stand the properties of materials, and to be familiar with technology and factory produc-tion. The Bauhaus embraced new materials, new technology, and sought to create a new aesthetic, unencumbered by historical tradi-tion. Students were taught that beauty was to be found in the economy of form, in the expressive use of materials, and in solutions that were suitable, economical, practical, and therefore inherently elegant.

Walter and Ise Gropius arrived in the United States in the spring of 1937 with little more than their furniture made in the workshops of the Bauhaus, their books, and office files. Their daughter Ati, twelve years old at the

time, remained behind in England to finish the school year. They immediately fell in love with the New England countryside and admired the landscape outside Cambridge and Boston and, in contrast to their apartments in Berlin and London, decided to live in more rural surround-ings. They found a Colonial-style house to rent on Sandy Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, but the house did not suit their functional or aesthetic needs. Ise later wrote, “Our Bauhaus furniture looked indeed strange in the small rooms of this prim little house of Colonial style.”

New social connections brought an extraordi-nary opportunity. Henry Shepley, an architect friend, approached philanthropist and patron of the arts Helen Storrow, informing her that “the new German professor” at the Harvard School of Design was ‘desperate’ to build a house for himself but was not in the financial position to do so. He suggested that she offer him a piece of land on her large estate in Lin-coln, Massachusetts, finance the house, and rent it to him so that they could “see what he might do.” Mrs. Storrow, who was known to support many individuals and organizations, agreed almost immediately. Mrs. Storrow thought that newly arrived immigrants should always be given a chance, so she offered Gropius a building site and the financial resources to build his house, because as she put it, “if it is good, it will take root.” Gropius chose four acres on a small hill surrounded by Mrs. Storrow’s apple orchard.

Working with local Concord, Massachusetts, builder Casper J. Jenney and approximately $20,000, the Gropius’s wanted their home to reflect its surroundings and traveled around New England studying vernacular architec-ture. In designing the house, Gropius com-bined traditional elements of New England architecture such as clapboard, brick, and fieldstone, with new, innovative materials, some of them industrial, such as glass block, acoustical plaster, and chromed banisters, along with the latest technology in fixtures. The design of the Gropius House is consis-tent with Bauhaus philosophies of simplicity, functionality, economy, geometry, and aes-thetic beauty determined by materials rather than applied ornamentation.

Gropius used traditional New England building materials and architectural elements in intrigu-ing ways, like the vertical clapboard walls of the front hall which are not only functional but


NEW ENGLAND

beautiful. Gropius used their vertical orienta-tion to create the illusion of height as well as a practical surface for hanging an ever-chang-ing collection of artwork; wood is an easy surface to nail, patch, and paint. The entrance is an example of how Gropius interpreted a center entrance Colonial with a Bauhaus twist. This portico is on a diagonal that leads the visitor to the front door according to the natu-ral approach. A glass block wall protects from wind and rain, yet allows light to permeate the entry passage as well as the interior hall. Mrs. Gropius noted that repairs were “kept to a minimum because the house was remarkably well built.” After weathering criticism and be-wilderment about the house’s unusual design and materials from fellows in the local lumber yard, builder Casper Jenney of Concord was vindicated in the eyes of his colleagues after the house survived the devastating hurricane of 1938 with minimal damage.

Many of the fixtures in the Gropius House were sourced from non-traditional commercial catalogs. For example, the hall sconces were ordered from hotel catalogs. On each side of the bathroom mirrors, half-chrome light bulbs redirect light to the sides and reflect light back to the mirrors. This creates flattering light, while simultaneously eliminating the need for any additional lighting shade or cover. The towel rack was installed on the hot water radia-tor to warm the towels, which in 1938 was an idea ahead of its time. The Gropius House has four bathrooms, two on the first floor and two on the second floor; they are all plumbed on one main stack for efficiency and economy. All four bathrooms were located in the less promi-

nent northwest corner of the house, where solar gain and views were not important.

Above the Marcel Breuer-designed white Formica dining room table is a ceiling light fixture that was a type used by museums to highlight a piece of artwork. It has a particu-lar adjustable aperture so that it illuminates only to the perimeter of the table. This dramatic lighting effect was used by the Gro-piuses as part of their entertaining repertoire of sparkling dishes, floral arrangements, cast shadows, and flattering light.

Gropius experimented with non-traditional materials such as the California acoustic plaster found throughout the living and dining room walls and ceilings as well as elsewhere in the house. A very porous substance that unfortunately has “greyed” over time from its original white color, it was applied with a spray gun over the lath. Its sound-absorbing characteristics still function effectively.

Almost all of the furniture in the house was handmade in the Bauhaus workshops in Dessau before the family left Germany. There are a few notable exceptions, including the Saarinen ‘womb’ chair and the Sori Yanagi ‘butterfly’ footstools in the living room. Ise purchased the two-seat TECTA sofa in the living room in 1975 from Germany.

Guests to the Gropiuses’ home and dinner table included their Bauhaus friends and fellow émigrés as well as other notables of the twentieth century. Alexander Calder, Joan Miro, Igor Stravinsky, Henry Moore, Demetri

ARCHITECTURE ARCHITECTUREHadzi, and Frank Lloyd Wright are a few names in the Gropius guest book.

In several ways, Gropius incorporated the philosophy of living in harmony with nature. The large plate glass windows have a dual purpose: they visually bring the outdoors in, but also permit passive solar gain. Another strategy he used was to allow the flat roof rainwater and snow melt to drain through a center pipe to a dry well. Over time, Mrs. Gropius designed her gardens to become low-water, low-maintenance, and incorporated indigenous plants. They did not have air con-ditioning, but used passive ventilation.

Walter Gropius believed that the relationship of a house to its landscape was of paramount importance, and he designed the grounds of the home as carefully as the structure itself. In 1938, the Gropiuses enjoyed sweeping views because the house stood alone on top of the hill unobstructed by trees and woods. The grassy plinth on which the house sits is defined by stone walls. This “civilized area” around the house included a lawn extending roughly twenty feet around the house and a perennial garden that continued the thrust of the south-facing screen porch. Beyond the well-tended ring, the apple orchard and meadow were left to grow naturally. For new trees, the Gropiuses selected Scotch pine, white pine, elm, oak, and American beech.

Wooden trellises reaching from the east and west sides of the house and covered with roses, and vines offered privacy and protection from the road. Vines such as bittersweet, Con-cord grape, and trumpet vine were planted to link the house to the landscape. The Gropius’s goal was to create a New England landscape, complete with mature trees, rambling stone walls, and rescued boulders as focal points.

The Japanese-inspired garden in the back of the house was installed by Mrs. Gropius in 1957 after a trip to Asia. It was her inten-tion to create a low-horizon profile in the garden with azaleas, cotoneasters, candy-tuft, and junipers, and to use a red maple as the focal point under the arch.

Walter and Ise Gropius considered the screened porch to be among the best practi-cal New England responses to the environ-ment. However, they noted, porches usually

darkened interior living spaces and were often placed at the front or side of a house. In past decades a porch overlooking the road would be quite pleasant, with neighbors and infrequent slow-moving vehicles passing by. However, modern living dictated that a porch should not force the occupants of the house to endure the noise of the street. Gropius adapted the basic idea, placing the porch perpendicular to the house to capture every available breeze, provide total privacy from the road, and darken only a service room. The screened porch room permitted outdoor living year round. Mr. Gropius played ping-pong there in the winter months, as the south and west-facing sun would warm it in winter, and the breezes would cool it in summer.

On the advice of Mrs. Storrow, the garage was placed at the foot of the driveway to the left of the entrance. This was a distance from the house, but convenient for minimizing snow shoveling in winter. It also provided an unobstructed view of the main structure. After Mrs. Storrow’s death in 1945, the Gropiuses bought the house from her son, and added one and a half acres to the original four acres.

The Gropius House remains today what Mrs. Gropius called “a happy amalgam” of the New England vernacular and the Bauhaus spirit.


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D r eam i n g

B i gD r e a m s In 1989, Bert and John Jacobs designed their first tee shirt. They knew nothing about the business.

For five years, the brothers hawked tee shirts in the streets of Boston and traveled the East Coast, selling door-to-door in college dormitories.

They collected some good stories, but were not very prosperous. They lived on peanut butter and jelly, slept in their van, and show-ered when they could.

Chicks were not impressed.

By the Fall of 1994, heading home from a long, less-than-fruitful roadtrip, Bert and John were desperately searching for answers to keep the dream alive. Little did they know, the only answer they needed was back in Boston, hanging up on their apartment wall.

Jake’s contagious grin, simple as it was, seemed to express everything the Jacobs brothers believed in.

One fateful September day, they printed up 48 Jake shirts for a local street fair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They laid the shirts out on their rickety card table. By noontime, all 48 of those tees were gone. A star was born.

Soon Jake was introduced to local retailers, and his simple message of optimism was embraced like nothing the brothers had ever seen. As demand for product soared, Jake’s team grew, and the Little Brand That Could began to spread across America.

Today, the New England based brand stays

close to its roots, with an emphasis on simplicity, humor and humility. Through Life is good Festivals, positive products, and a steady dose of ping pong, Jake’s crew does its best to keep the good vibes flowing.

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FASHION FASHION

Beginnings: 1911 to 1959

In 1911, an avid outdoorsman named Leon Leonwood (“L.L.”) Bean returned from a hunting trip with cold, damp feet and a revolutionary idea. L.L. enlisted a local cobbler to stitch leather uppers to workmen’s rubber boots, creating a comfortable, functional boot for exploring the Maine woods. This innovative boot – the Maine Hunting Shoe® – changed outdoor footwear forever and began one of the most suc-cessful family-run businesses in the country.

L.L. began his business by working out of the basement of his brother’s apparel shop. In 1912, he obtained a mailing list of nonresi-dent Maine hunting license holders and prepared a three-page flyer that boldly proclaimed, “You cannot expect success hunting deer or moose if your feet are not properly dressed. The Maine Hunting Shoe is designed by a hunter who has tramped the Maine woods for the last 18 years. We guarantee them to give perfect satisfaction in every way.” The public could not resist the commonsense logic and genuine enthusiasm of his appeal.

One hundred orders came in for his new product. However, L.L. did not meet with immediate success. The rubber bottoms separated from the leather tops and 90 of those first 100 pairs were returned. Although

it nearly put him out of business, L.L. kept his word and refunded the purchase price. He borrowed more money, corrected the problem and, with undiminished confidence, mailed more brochures. L.L. had learned the value of personally testing his products, of honest advertising based on firm convictions and of keeping the customer satisfied at any cost.

L.L. focused on the essentials. Employees also understood that the busi-ness of L.L.Bean was to provide high-quality products backed by excel-lent service. As Leon Gorman, grandson of L.L. and company president from 1967 to 2001, has said, “Word-of-mouth advertising and customer satisfaction were critical to L.L.’s way of thinking. To hear that one of his products failed was a genuine shock to his system. That customer was a real person to L.L. and he’d put his trust in the L.L.Bean catalog.”

L.L.Bean, Inc., quickly established itself as a trusted source for reliable outdoor equipment and expert advice. The small company grew.

A Time of Growth: 1960 to 1999

Leon Gorman, L.L.’s grandson, joined the company in 1961. Accord-ing to Leon, L.L. had “established an image that was as broad in its appeal and as enduring in its acceptance as any in marketing history.” Despite this, significant challenges lay ahead. When he first came to

work at L.L.Bean in 1961, the average employee age was 60 and sales had leveled off at around $2 million.

In 1967, Leon Leonwood Bean passed away at the age of 94. Some of those closest to the company wondered if it could go on without L.L.’s strong influence. Fifty thousand letters of condolence from customers all over the country poured into Freeport, noting the accomplishments of the man TIME magazine once hailed as “The Merchant of the Maine Woods.” The overwhelming public response helped bolster employees’ determination to build on L.L.’s success.

Leon Gorman took over as company president in 1967 and led the company’s transition into a modern, world-class organization. He studied old catalogs, talked with long-time employees and vendors and immersed himself in learning about L.L.Bean products and markets. He formalized the company’s customer service approach, revitalized its leadership and updated compensation policies. The old mailing list (fewer than a million names) was converted to a computerized data-base. Manufacturing moved to an updated facility, located about a mile from the original building. A 110,000-square-foot distribution facility was built on nearby property in 1974, then expanded again in 1979 to a 310,000-square-foot facility with over a mile of conveyer belts.

In 1989, L.L.Bean Manufacturing moved into a new facility that incorporated ergonomically designed systems. Ergonomic worksta-tions were also introduced into all other areas of the company.

In 1992, the company expanded its international business presence to include a store in Japan. And in 1995, L.L.Bean began its expansion into the electronic commerce market by launching llbean.com.

2000 to Today

Today, L.L.Bean is an industry leader in brand manage-ment, customer loyalty and marketing database systems. The company is a well-recognized world leader in the mail order and retail industries and has developed a multichan-nel approach to maintaining the same high level of service for customers in the US and abroad.


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FASHION FASHION

in Memory ofAlfred Fiandaca

As a little boy in East Boston, fashion designer Alfred Fiandaca was known to linger in bed, sewing costumes for his puppets. At 9, he was cutting patterns alongside his father, a tailor at the Harvard Coop. And by the time he was 21, he had his own salon in East Boston, catering to Boston’s women of means.

His classic, understated women’s garments, from business suits to evening gowns, were worn by Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Joan Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, and Ann Romney, among other prominent figures and socialites.

Mr. Fiandaca died Feb. 9 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in his Palm Beach, Fla., home. He was 72 and maintained a couture house in Palm Beach as well as in New York.

For more than 40 years, he had a studio on Newbury Street in Bos-ton, which relocated to Albany Street in 2009.

“He was the foremost Boston fashion designer,” said Sondra Grace, chairwoman of the fashion design department of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. “There were some seconds, but he was number one.”

According to Mr. Fiandaca’s daughter, Michelle, his accomplishments were all the more noteworthy because he was dyslexic. She remembers watching him design garments by sketching while looking into a mirror.

If there could be a genetic disposition to tailoring, Mr. Fiandaca almost certainly was endowed with it. He descended from a line of men’s tailors on his father’s side reaching back to his great-grand-father in Italy. His mother was a second-generation seamstress who made women’s clothing. It was Mr. Fiandaca’s paternal grandfather, though, who steered him toward women’s wear.

“He said that’s where the money was,” said Michelle, who lives in Winthrop. “That’s how the dresses evolved.”

Mr. Fiandaca studied fashion design in New York and at the Mas-sachusetts College of Art and Design, which had a retrospective of his work in 2000. The show included the first dress he ever made, a flowered print chemise, according to Grace, the curator.

“He was known for color, especially in the early days,” Grace said. “He loved that pop of pink. They were fanciful dresses that were flirtatious. Women looked like they were having a lot of fun.”

Picture of Alfred Fiandaca in his shop


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FASHION FASHION“That’s because the rest of it was all enjoyment,” said a friend, Judith Nee.

Handsome, silver-haired, fit, with a generous toothy smile, “he was ageless, playful, joyful,” his former wife said. “He was guileless. He did not have a nasty bone in his body, which is unusual in the fashion business. It doesn’t make you necessarily a good businessman, but it makes you somebody everybody loves.”

Five months ago, Mr. Fiandaca married his longtime companion, Carl Bartels, a florist, in Boston.

A piece from Fiandaca’s S/S 2011 collection


Mr. Fiandaca “always made you feel pretty and young and pampered,” said his former wife, Theadora Sabia Fiandaca of Winthrop.

She and Mr. Fiandaca grew up on the same street in East Boston and remained friends after their divorce in 1972.

“He had a real appreciation of femininity, in a classic timeless way,” she said. “Someone 20 or 70 could wear them and they would look appropriate. A lot of women from Palm Beach society wear his dresses from 20 to 30 years ago.”

His fashion design career had humble beginnings when he opened a tiny salon on Maverick Street in East Boston, two doors from his family home.

“It was just a small reception room and a dressing room with a curtain,” said his longtime friend Doris Yaffe of Boston, who worked for him.

It was there that the city’s Brahmin community discovered him, said Yaffe, recalling that one woman, “a big, big name,” pulled up regu-larly in a chauffeur-driven limousine. When Mr. Fiandaca moved his shop to Newbury Street, it became a regular destination for society ladies after lunching at the Ritz-Carlton.

“That was their playground,” Yaffe said. “They’d walk halfway down the block, and say, ‘We’re going to Fiandaca.’ ”

Not one to salute the latest trends, he nevertheless dazzled New York City one season in the mid-1970s when Bergdorf Goodman filled every store window with his garments, Yaffe said.

“He was a fashion genius,” Michelle said. “He was not a businessman. He was not one to promote his label like these so-called couture de-signers nowadays. He was truly a haute couture designer who made clothes exclusively for society women, never for mass production. It was always for the love of the art.”

Though away from the spotlight in recent years, his profile ascended again last year during campaign season when Ann Romney wore his creations to a presidential debate and on TV talk shows.

According to Mr. Fiandaca’s longtime business partner Caroline Collings, he vowed never to retire. He was fond of saying he’d never worked more than two weeks in his life.


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Cambridge MadeThe Bay Psalm Book

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The Boston Herald can trace its roots back to 1846 when a new newspaper named The Herald first ap-peared. Since that edition, Boston has always had a newspaper with the name “Herald” on its masthead. However, today’s Boston Herald really evolved from a number of different Boston newspapers along two principal lines: that of the Daily Advertiser and that of the old Boston Herald.

Today’s Boston HeraldToday’s Boston Herald came into existence on December 20, 1982, when Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. bought the tabloid from the Hearst Corporation and changed its name from the Herald American back to the Boston Herald.

In February of 1994, Patrick Purcell, publisher of the Boston Herald and a News Corp. executive, purchased the Boston Herald from Murdoch’s News Corp. and established it as an independent newspaper.

In 2001, Herald Media acquired Community Newspaper Co. (CNC), a group of four suburban dailies and numerous weekly, online and specialty publications. In 2006, Purcell sold CNC to Gatehouse Media.

Herald Media established its online division in 1995 with the introduction of jobfind.com, New England’s premier online recruitment site. Two years later, Herald Interactive launched BostonHerald.com and shortly thereaf-ter posted homefind.com and carfind.com.

Herald Interactive prides itself on delivering quality products for its us-ers and a cost-effective, creative marketing medium for its advertisers.

HistoryPUBLISHING

The Daily AdvertiserThe Daily Advertiser was established in 1813 in Boston by Nathan Hale, a cousin of the famous patriot. Located near the Old State House, this newspaper served a wealthy Republican audience.

In 1840, the Daily Advertiser took over five older Boston newspapers, including the Independent Chronicle, which was founded in 1768. It continued to gain a higher profile and by the time the Great Fire of 1872 hit Newspaper Row (the area near today’s Government Center), the Advertiser was keeping Boston well-informed. In 1884, the Daily Advertiser began printing the Afternoon Record.

Some years later, in 1904, William Randolph Hearst started a new news-paper in Boston called The American. Hearst bought the Daily Advertiser in 1917 and then purchased the Afternoon Record in 1921. (The Record is notable in that it was the first New England newspaper to adopt a tabloid format.) Hearst was now a major media presence in Boston.

By 1938, the Daily Advertiser, Afternoon Record and American had changed their names to Daily Record, Evening American and Sunday Advertiser. In 1961, the Record merged with the American into an “all day newspaper” named the Record American. Three years later, in 1964, the Sunday Advertiser switched to a tabloid format.

The Record American and Sunday Advertiser would continue publication until 1972 when they merged with a line of newspapers stretching back to the old Boston Herald.

The Old Boston HeraldFounded in 1846, the Boston Herald was the result of the collaboration of a group of Boston printers joined under the name of John A. French & Co. They published a single sheet, two-sided paper and sold it for 1 penny per copy. Its first editor, William O. Eaton, then only 22 years old, said “The Herald will be independent in politics and religion; liberal, industrious, enterprising, critically concerned with literacy and dramatic matters, and diligent in its mission to report and analyze the news, local and global.”

In 1861, with the advent of the Civil War and an increased demand for news, the Sunday Herald was established.

In 1872, when the Great Fire swept Newspaper Row, Herald edi-tors and reporters worked 48 sleepless hours amidst smoke and flames to deliver the news.

While the Boston Herald flourished and grew, so did the Boston Traveler, founded in 1825 as a bulletin for stagecoach listings. In 1912, the Herald purchased the Traveler, publishing morning and evening editions until 1967, when the Boston Herald effectively absorbed the Boston Traveler, becoming the Boston Herald Traveler.

Several years later, in 1972, the Herald Traveler was sold to the Hearst Corporation (owners of the Record American, descended from the Daily Advertiser), merging in to the Record American/Herald Traveler. In January 1973, the unwieldy name was modified to Boston Herald American. The Boston Herald American became a tabloid newspaper in September 1981. In 1982, the Hearst Corporation sought a buyer for the Herald American. The Herald American was the immediate predecessor of today’s Boston Herald.

HeArAld


NEW ENGLAND

PUBLISHING

Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, the first newspa-per published in America, was printed by Richard Pierce and edited by Benjamin Harris in Boston on September 25, 1690. It filled only 3 of 4 six by ten inch pages of a folded sheet of paper. The journalist stated in his his first (and only) issue that he would issue the newspaper “once a month, or, if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener.”

Benjamin Harris’s news was real news and was the first and last of-fered to Americans for many years. Publick Occurrences was brought to an end after only one issue by an outraged administration, claim-ing that it contained “reflections of a very high order.” It was printed without authority. An aroused bureaucracy issued a broadside warning against future publications of any kind without “licence [sic] first ob-tained from those appointed by the Government to grant the same.”

Fourteen years elapsed between the appearance of America’s first and second newspapers. John Campbell, a bookseller appointed Postmas-ter of Boston, was the editor. His newspaper was the Boston News-Let-ter and the first issue was dated Monday, April 17 to Monday April 24, 1704. The pages were slightly larger than those of Publick Occurrences.

In the first issue of the News-Letter there was only one advertisement: “This News-Letter is to be continued Weekly, and all persons who have

any lands, houses, tenements, farms, ships, vessels, goods, wares or merchandise to be sold or lett; or servants runaway, or goods Stoll [sic], or lost, may have the same inserted at a reasonable rate; From Twelve Pence to Five Shillings and not to exceed. Who may agree with Nicholas Boone for the same, at his shop next door to Major Davis’s apothecary, in Boston, near the Old Meeting House. All persons in Town and Country may have the same News-Letter, Weekly, upon reasonable tearms [sic], agreeing with John Campbell, Post-Master, for the same.” This newspaper was never very prosperous.

When William Brooker was appointed Postmaster to replace Camp-bell, Brooker wanted to continue the newspaper under the same title. Campbell held out and refused to authorize the use of the title News-Letter to anyone else. Brooker sidestepped the matter and called his newspaper the Boston Gazette which made its first appearance on December 21, 1719. Likely for this reason, there was great animosity between the two newspapers. An early issue of the News-Letter car-ried this editorial: “I pity the reader of the new paper; it is not fit reading for the people.”

Seven months later, Philip Musgrave was awarded the position of Postmaster in Boston and replaced Brooker. At this time, James Franklin, the printer of the Gazette, was also replaced. Franklin

PUBLISHING

PUBliCK OCCUrrENCESBoth F O R E I G N and D O M E S T I C

By R. J. Brown Editor-in-Chief

wanted to start his own newspaper despite friends and family telling him that Boston already had enough newspapers (2) and a third could not survive. Despite this, Franklin went ahead and published his own newspaper, the New England Courant on August 19, 1721. It became the fourth newspaper published in America.

Campbell, in his News-Letter commented in one of his issues: “...The New England Courant... by Homo Unius Negotii, or Jack of All Trades, and, it would seem, Good at None... giving some very, very frothy ful-some Account of himself...” When James Franklin published an editorial criticizing the government for lack of interest in getting rid of pirates that were harassing shipping off the New England coast he was sent to pris-on. James’ 13 year old brother and apprentice, Ben, took over the work of laying type, printing, and delivery of the issues. Six months later, James Franklin was forbidden to publish any more newspapers so the masthead now carried the name Ben Franklin as editor and publisher. Young Ben, now legally being free of being an apprentice, and not liking his brother James, ran away to New York and later to Philadelphia. The New England Courant kept publishing issues claiming Ben Franklin was editor and publisher until 1726 without anyone being the wiser.

The Boston Newsletter

Did you know?!

Since the first postmater, Richard Fairbanks, who

was appointed in 1639, there has been 57 differ-

ent postmasters in Boston, MA. Out of those 57

postmasters, only 1 was offically appointed to the

position; there have been 2 women who acted as

“Officer in Charge”. The only woman postmaster

is Marsha A. Cannon who was appointed to the

position in 2003 and served until 2007. The cur-

rent postmaster in Boston is James J. Holland

who has been in the position since 2008.

America’s first continuously-published newspaper, the Boston News-Letter published its first issue on April 24, 1704. John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston, was its first editor, printing the newspaper on what was then referred to as a half-sheet. It originally appeared on a single page, printed on both sides and issued weekly.

In the early years of its publication the News-Letter was filled mostly with news from London journals detailing the intrigues of English politics, and a variety of events concerning the European wars. The rest of the newspaper was filled with items listing ship arrivals, deaths, sermons, political appoint-ments, fires, accidents and the like.

One of the most sensational stories published when the News-Letter was the only newspaper in the colonies was the the account of how Blackbeard the pirate was killed in hand-to-hand combat on the deck of a sloop that had engaged his ship in battle.


NEW ENGLAND

PUBLISHING

In the very first issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator, William Lloyd Gar-rison stated, “I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.” And Garrison was heard. For more than three decades, from the first issue of his weekly paper in 1831, until after the end of the Civil War in 1865 when the last issue was published, Garrison spoke out eloquent-ly and passionately against slavery and for the rights of America’s black inhabitants.

The son of a merchant sailing master, William Lloyd Garrison was born in New-buryport, Massachusetts, in 1805. Due in large measure to the Embargo Act, which Congress had passed in 1807, the Garrison family fell on hard times while William was still young. In 1808 Wil-liam’s father deserted the family, forcing them to scrounge for food from more prosperous families and forcing William to work, selling homemade molasses candy and delivering wood.

In 1818, after suffering through vari-ous apprenticeships, Garrison began work for the Newburyport Herald as a writer and editor. This job and subsequent newspaper jobs would give the young Garrison the skills he would utilize so expertly when he later published his own paper.When he was 25, Garrison joined the Abolition movement. He became associated with the American Colonization Society, an organization that believed free blacks should emigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. At first glance the society seemed to promote the freedom and happiness of blacks. There

PUBLISHING

The Massachusetts Abolitionist (1839-1841) was the organ of the Massachu-setts Abolition Society, a faction of the Antislavery movement that believed that abolition could be achieved through political means and offered an alterna-tive to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the Liberator, and William Lloyd Garrison's non-resistance phi-losophy. Under the direction of its first editor, the multitalented Elizur Wright, the paper became the Massachusetts spokesman for the Liberty Party and its presidential candidate, James G. Birney. After their candidate's over-whelming defeat in the 1840 election, the paper changed its name to the Free American and attempted to broaden its audience; however in December, 1841 it merged with the New York based Emancipator in order to provide a more unified voice for its supporters. Despite its relatively short existence, the paper provides extraordinary insights into the divisions within the Antislavery move-ment and the movement's relationship to collateral reform activities.

eon images.com

bpl.org

certainly were members who encouraged the manumission (granting of freedom) to slaves. However, it turned out that the number of members advocating manumission consti-tuted a minority. Most members had no wish to free slaves; their goal was only to reduce the numbers of free blacks in the country and thus help preserve the institution of slavery.

By 1830 Garrison had rejected the programs of the American Colonization Society. By this time he had worked as co-editor of an antislavery paper started by Benjamin Lundy in Maryland, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. And on January 1, 1831, he published the first issue of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator.

In speaking engagements and through the Liberator and other publications, Garrison advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves. This was an unpopular view during the 1830s, even with northerners who were against slavery. What would become of all the freed slaves? Certainly they could not as-similate into American society, they thought. Garrison believed that they could assimilate. He believed that, in time, all blacks would be equal in every way to the country’s white citi-zens. They, too, were Americans and entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Though circulation of the Liberator was relatively limited -- there were less than 400 subscriptions during the paper’s second year -- Garrison soon gained a reputation for being the most radical of abolitionists. Still, his ap-proach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive restistance, and he did attract a following. In 1832 he helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and, the follow-ing year, the American Anti-Slavery Society. These were the first organizations dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation.

Garrison was unyeilding and steadfast in his beliefs. He believed that the the Anti-Slavery Society should not align itself with any politi-cal party. He believed that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery Society. He believed that the U.S. Constitu-tion was a pro-slavery document. Many within the Society differed with these positions, however, and in 1840 there was a major rift in the Society which resulted in the founding of two additional organizations: the Liberty Party, a political organization, and the American

and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. Later, in 1851, the once devoted and admiring Frederick Douglass stated his belief that the Constitution could be used as a weapon against slavery. Garrison, feeling betrayed, attacked Douglass through his paper. Douglass responded, and the attacks intensified. Garrison and Douglass would never reconcile their differences.

Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclama-tion was a government decree, Garrison supported it wholeheartedly. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Garrison published his last issue of the Liberator. After thirty five years and 1,820 issues, Garrison did not fail to publish a single issue.

WilliAM llOyD gArriSON


NEW ENGLAND

PUBLISHING

William Addison Dwiggins.

Who?

Why he was just a typographic tinkerer who said a lot of things:

“What any given person knows about the graphic side of advertising is limited. There is no body of tested data relating to the subject.”

“The end product of advertising is not printing—it is sales.”

“What type does the architect of advertising elect to use, and why? That question is the acolyte’s invariable first prayer for enlighten-ment—phrased always in one of the various voices of despair—what

PUBLISHINGa renowned former editor of the American Printer and more recently is the retired head of the Graphic Arts Department at Syracuse Uni-versity. As WAD’S cousin, he is in an excellent position to inform the present-day acolytes about one of the most remarkable practitioners ever to labor in the area of typographic design.

The above quotations were taken from a book, Layout in Advertising, which Dwiggins wrote while commuting between his home in Hingham and Boston, where he maintained a studio. It was published in 1928 and reprinted in 1948. Both editions are now out of print and most ex-isting copies have been worn to a frazzle by a couple of generations of delighted owners. Nearly everyone who has ever read the book would nominate it for a Nobel Prize in the categories of literature, graphic design, or just plain common sense.

That Dwiggins approached the task of writing a manual of design with some trepidation may be noticed in the preface to this text, in which he quoted Izaak Walton. Walton wrote, in his own treatise on angling, of the difficulty of teaching anything practical in a book: “Not but that many useful things might be learned . . . but art is not to be taught by words, but by practice.”

Nevertheless WAD did teach by words by virtue of his quiet wisdom and tongue-in-cheek comments concerning many of the dogmas that have come down through a thousand texts on the subject of graphic design. The very title of the book assures the reader of its practicality. His words were buttressed, however, by the numerous little sketches placed in the margins of the book to illustrate his principles. Today it would probably be called Graphics for Advertising Typography, but—lacking the four-color reproductions of what’s hot on Madison Avenue—it might never find a publisher.

Dwiggins was just not at home in the field of advertising and promo-tion, but was, in essence, the Compleat Printer, covering a wider range of activity than any other noted typographer of this century.

In fact, he is collected today by such a divergent group as illustrators, calligraphers, bibliophiles. typographers, and puppeteers—not to men-tion those who accumulate his writings and couldn’t care less whether or not he had the ability to place the proverbial line properly on the paper.

In all of this divergent activity his talent is first class, be it satirical prose or the spine of a binding. In the latter category, a collector could easily specialize and praise the gods that publishers allowed Dwig-gins the time to develop this skill into an art form. I recall spending a couple of pleasant hours working with the late George Salter at AIGA in mounting a small show of Dwiggins’ work. Salter, one of the great calligraphers, stated that WAD’S way with lettering a book title was superb and could not be duplicated by anyone, here or abroad.

No one has yet managed to publish a complete bibliography of the work of Bill Dwiggins, but I am happy to report that Dwight Agner, production manager at Louisiana State University Press, after several years of effort is currently printing what will undoubtedly become the most ambi-tious bibliography yet written, in his tiny Press of the Night Owl.

As a book designer, Dwiggins produced over 500 volumes of trade

WilliAM DWiggiNStype shall I use? The gods refuse an answer. They refuse (sacrilege though it be to say it) because they do not know.”

It would be easy to fill this entire magazine with such excerpts since the remarks of Bill Dwiggins comprise a veritable Bartlett’s of the Graphic Arts. In fact, to demonstrate who Dwiggins was is not really necessary or even to argue but simply to quote.

What brings him to mind at this moment is the realization that it is now 17 years since his death, on Christmas Day, 1956.

Just this week I received word from Laurance Siegfried that on Janu-ary 15, 1974, he will speak at the opening of the Dwiggins’ Room in the Boston Public Library. Old-timers will recall that Larry Siegfried is

40 / DESiGN ROOTS: NEW ENGLAND

PUBLISHINGeditions for one publisher alone (Alfred A. Knopf). In addition he made numerous designs for other houses, including the Limited Editions Club.

Next to book typography, he is known for the types which he designed for Mergenthaler Linotype Co., which included one of the most widely used styles ever produced in this country—Caledonia. This design represented a new approach to that 19th century standard, Scotch Roman. Caledonia is a perfect type for the typography of the book. having excellent weight and a high degree of legibility besides being free from annoying characteristics.

Another highly regarded Dwiggins’ type is Electra, a type in the mod-ern classification but lacking the mechanical features of the Bodoni-Didot style. The first type drawn by Dwiggins was the sans serif Metro (1929), which was the Linotype entry into the serifless derby of the Twenties. I have stats of WAD’S first drawings for Metro, and it is a far different type than the face finally chosen for production, which was particularly successful in the newspaper field. Dwiggins, as a humanist, naturally enough was drawn to a sans serif with a classical base, rather in the manner of Hermann Zapf’s Optima de-sign of the 1950’s. It would be interesting to see the correspondence between Hingham and Brooklyn at that time!

To many typographers, Dwiggins was at his most unique in his pro-duction of ornaments, to which he brought a style which was strictly his own, and whimsical in the extreme. Here is a field in which was inimitable, and which lent an individualized style to his work which has never been approached, providing the instant recognition upon which his reputation was built.

Will Dwiggins seems to me to be one of the finest graphic artists of our time. For today’s younger typographers there is much to be gained by a study of his 51-year career. This is true particularly at a time when there appears to be a continuing search for ways and means by which to emerge from the sterility of overuse of the su-perabundant sans serif types and an increasing dependence upon mechanical grid systems in design.

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practicum magazine 9