Keep your fire escapes clear – Vintage Print
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Few images capture their era like this vintage poster of Keep your fire escapes clear. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Keep your fire escapes clear
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A city safety campaign, not a fire engine, is the subject here: this 1936 silkscreen poster urges New Yorkers to keep their fire escapes clear. Its sponsors were the New York City Tenement House Department, under Commissioner Langdon W. Post, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Crowded tenement residents often stored furniture, crates, and other goods on fire escapes, which could block the one route out of a burning building. The design is attributed to an artist named Muller and was produced under the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs that employed artists during the Depression.
| Created / published | 1936 |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen color. |
| Notes | Date stamped on verso: Apr 16 1937. Poster design attributed to Muller. F.H. La Guardia Mayor - Langdon W. Post Commissioner - Tenement House Dept. of the City of New York. Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress). Posters of the WPA / Christopher DeNoon. Los Angeles : Wheatly Press c1987 no. 223 · Federal Art Project sponsor. |
| Subjects | Tenement houses--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Fire escapes--New York (State)--New York--1930-1940. Safety--1930-1940. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Work Projects Administration Poster Collection |
| Original scan | 977 × 1,536 px · prints to 3 × 5 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | 599_Keep_your_fire_escapes_1936 |
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