HERBERT MORTON STOOPS (1888-1948) CASTLETON CUT - OFF / NEW YORK CENTRAL LINES. 1925.
40¼x26¼ inches, 102¼x66½ cm. Latham Litho. & Ptg. Co., Long Island City.
Condition A-: minor repaired tears and creases at edges; creases and abrasions along vertical and horizontal folds.
This was New York Central's first poster, issued in July 1925, in a campaign and a series that would cement its reputation as "railroading's most effective advertiser" (Zega p. 63). The poster "commemorates the commissioning of its massive high-level Hudson River Bridge at Castleton, New York. Herbert Morton Stoops, a New York artist best known for his wartime art and western scenes, chose to focus his work on the bulk of the span's soaring concrete piers, atop which a locomotive's steam trail is barely visible" (Zega p. 68). Rare. We have found only four other examples at auction in the last 20 years. Zega 85.