Cryptorotographs

According to one account of the sale of the Rotograph Co. in 1911, the company's archives housed more than two million photographic images, only a small percentage of which were ever printed as postcards. That total presumably included the images that had been captured by photographers for the National Art Views Company, a short-lived predecessor that Rotograph had acquired in 1904, but many other new views were probably shot during Rotograph's heyday. Thus far I've found no information on the identities of the company's photographers, though such information may exist. Perhaps, like today's surveyors for Google Street View, they quietly went about their business as they roamed cities and small towns, unobtrusively snapping anything they thought might be marketable.

But there's an additional category of work that Rotograph handled, and that was the output of local professional or amateur photographers whose images were printed by Rotograph (or by its affiliated factories in Germany) and sold under proprietary names by druggists, stationers, and other small businesses, often in towns that were small in size or off the beaten path. These images might not bear the Rotograph name, but they can often be at least tentatively identified by diagnostic design elements, in particular the typeface employed.

That Rotograph (and its competitors) did this kind of work is clear from contemporary advertisements. Allen Freeman Davis refers to one such ad in his Postcards from Vermont: a Social History, 1905-1945:

The Rotograph Company of New York, which also published Vermont view cards, advertised that they could have cards printed in Germany at the cost of nine dollars a thousand if at least 3,000 of any subject were ordered. "We require good sharp photographs," the ad announced. "It is very necessary when ordering colored cards to give the color scheme." The company promised delivery in three to five months.

In addition to the choice between monochrome and color (and possibly, how many colors were to be printed, since each additional color would require an additional plate and therefore additional expense) the quality of the finished product, of course, would depend on the skill of the photographer, as well as on communication between the buyer and the printer. For nature scenes a standard palette of colors might serve, but for buildings the printer would have to be told what colors were true to the actual paint on the structures.

Below are several cards likely to have been printed by Rotograph, though they were "published" by local businesses. (The Rotograph Co., incidentally, published other views of some of the same towns using its regular trademark.) All except the last are from towns in the Catskills that were popular resort areas in spite of their small year-round population. The first two (as well as the card at the top of this page, with its misspelling of "queitude") were issued by J. Fahrenholz in Liberty, NY and postmarked in 1907 or 1908.


The next card, also from Liberty, was published by H. M. Stoddard & Son of nearby Stevensville, NY.


The one below was published by the Foyette Souvenir Store, also in Stevensville.


Finally, a postcard from E[dward] Farrington of Tarrytown, NY, whose later activity as a postcard publisher has been examined by Lucas Buresch at Archive Sleuth.


All of the above share the same Art Nouveau-inspired typeface employed by the Rotograph Co.(there must be someone out there who can identify it by name), with a characteristic florid capital "Y." Rotograph used other typefaces as well, so there may well be substantial numbers of additional "cryptorotographs" out there that aren't as instantly recognizable.

All of the cards from the Catskills show here were mailed to the same family, the subject of my earlier post at Dreamers Rise.

A Brief History

Here's as much of the history of the Rotograph Co. as I've been able to piece together. There must be more information out there, so I'd be happy to hear from anyone who can fill in the gaps.

The company appears to have been active as a publisher of postcards from 1904 until 1911. It was formed from the merger of the National Art Views Company (active 1902-1904), based in New York City, with the American branch of the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft, founded in 1894, which apparently was the corporate parent. The latter firm may have used the Rotograph name for a line of photographic paper for several years before this. Arthur Schwartz, the company's president, directed overall operations from Berlin; the vice-president, Ludwig Knackstedt, supervised its factory in Hamburg; and the former proprietor of the National Art Views Company, Frederick Schang, became the general manager of Rotograph's American operations. The firm also reportedly had factories in London, Paris, and Milan.

According to a contemporary account in The American Stationer, in 1905 or very early 1906 Rotograph consolidated several offices and warehouses at 771 East 164th Street, 395 Broadway, and 3621 Third Avenue into a new facility in the Mercantile Building at 684 Broadway.


The Rotograph Co. reportedly published around 60,000 images using a variety of printing techniques and styles, and encompassing a wide range of themes in addition to scenic view cards. In some cases, they appear to have produced proprietary cards for local druggists or stationers that didn't display the Rotograph name, although the connection to the company (or to its European affiliates) is evident. Below, for example, is a postcard published by "E. Farrington" of Tarrytown, NY. The typography and layout are identical to Rotograph's H series, and the number (9109) seems to follow the company's numbering system for that line. (The card shows two buildings, since extensively restored, that are now part of Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, NY.)


By March 1911, in spite of or perhaps because of its enormous output, the Rotograph Co. no longer existed as such, and the sale of its assets was reported in the Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer:

The Rotograph Co., well and favorably known to every dealer as makers of "Post Cards of Quality," have recently been absorbed by the Illustrated Postal Card & Novelty Co., 520-524 West Forty-eighth street, New York, whose plant is now said to be the largest one in the United States devoted exclusively to the manufacture of postcards. They employ 500 people. Their factory is equipped with special postcard machinery of every description, and operated by German experts in the line. Their product is therefore of the highest order, and can be delivered in quick time, and at a low price. Among the assets obtained from the Rotograph Co. is the largest collection of real photographs in the world, comprising thousands of art subjects, old masters, life models and over two million photographic views [emphasis added] from every nook and corner of the United States. The Illustrated Postal Card & Novelty Co. have just finished classifying this immense collection, and are putting the photo views at the free disposal of their customers who place view card orders. This latter inducement, no doubt, ought to bring them large view orders. — Geyer's Stationer.

The Metropolitan Postcard Club website lists two "Illustrated Post Card" companies, one (probably unrelated) in Quebec and the other, active 1905-1914, at 520 West 84th Street, New York, NY, the same address as the one given above. In fact the Illustrated Post Card & Novelty Co. seems to have lasted until at least 1918, but it doesn't appear to have amounted to much as a successor to Rotograph, and in any case importing high-quality cards from Germany was ended with the outbreak of the Great War. I don't know what became of the "two million photographic views" or other company archives. As for the German parent company, which presumably had liquidated its interest at the time of the sale, the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft remained in business until 1948.

Sources: General information: the websites of the Metropolitan Postcard Club and Rotopex (the latter site is no longer available). Information on Rotograph's relocation and its executives and printing plants is from The American Stationer, January 6, 1906, p. 4. The report of the acquisition of the company's assets by the Illustrated Post Card & Novelty Co. is from the Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, March 15, 1911, page 188, where it is in turn attributed to Geyer's Stationer. Advertisements for the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft's bromide "Rotograph" paper can be found in many trade periodicals from the first decade of the 20th century, including the St. Louis and Canadian Photographer in 1900, where the NPG's address is given as 7 West 14th Street, New York City.

Hearings in the US Congress on the Revenue Act of 1918 include testimony that the Illustrated Post Card Novelty Co. (without the ampersand) had manufactured and sold 75,000,000 cards in the previous year, but projected sales of only 15,000,000 in 1918 due to an increase in postage from one to two cents. The Postcard Album website declares that Arthur Schwartz "established the Rotograph Company in New York for the automatic printing of photographs in 1892," thus predating the founding of the NPG itself. The precise relationship between the various corporations involved remains unclear to me, but in any case it seems that the Rotograph name was not used on postcards until 1904.