Long-distance vacations are still on hold, but we'll always have #TravelTuesday. This advertising card for the Red Star Line offered travelers lists of agents that they could contact to procure tickets for steamship service between New York City (fine print, Jersey City) and Antwerp. The reverse of the card is particularly excited to let you know that the journey will be free of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs.
This item is undated, but was probably created between 1886 and 1893. The Red Star Line was founded in 1872 as a joint venture of the International Navigation Company, a Philadelphia-based shipping and steamship travel line created by the ship brokerage of Peter Wright & Sons, and the Societe Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Americaine. Various corporate reorganizations would occur over the ensuing years, one of them being the 1886 acquisition of the Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York Steamship Company's Inman Line (whose services are offered on the reverse of the card), another being the absorption of the financially troubled Inman Line into the International Navigation Company's American Line service in 1893.
This item is part of Hagley Library's Fingerman collection of ephemera (Accession 2009.213). Assembled by collectors Arlene and Gerald Fingerman, the collection consists of mixed-format ephemera from various endeavors within American culture, primarily the manufacturing and selling of products or services. Advertising cards and labels compose a large portion of the collection, but it also includes billheads, blotters, bookmarks, business cards, catalogs, checks, envelopes, flyers, letterheads, newsletters, packaging, postcards, and stamps. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety, but you can view a selection of 142 items from it online now in our Digital Archive by clicking here.