Familiar Finds from the Museum Archives
/a blog by Sierra Gitlin, Administrative Assistant
At the Museum of Old Newbury, we maintain an extensive archive of records and documents pertaining to local government offices, business, clubs, families and individuals. We have a receipt for payment to Moses Kimball who whitewashed the schoolhouse in 1779, ledger books from ships and shipyards spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, transcripts of speeches delivered at the Fortnightly Club, and the City Improvement Society's 1905 survey of our many noteworthy trees, among other gems. Recently, I was asked to find some promotional materials for the Newburyport Chamber of Commerce. They needed images from Newburyport’s past that they could enlarge and use as displays for their upcoming Annual Meeting on May 18. Of course, every time you open a box (or closet, drawer, or cabinet) at the Museum of Old Newbury, there’s bound to be an interesting surprise inside. But I was stunned and delighted by what I found in the gray archival box labeled “Newburyport Business and Industry.”
Cover image of promotional booklet “Climate for Growth”
It was a strange feeling to find the very familiar looking cover of a promotional booklet called “Climate for Growth,” produced in 1978 by the Newburyport Economic Development Commission under Mayor Richard Sullivan. Although the booklet was published by Newburyport Press the year I was born, the illustrations were immediately recognizable, even though I’d never seen them. “Could it be?” I thought to myself as I looked closer, and carefully flipped to the table of contents. There it was: "Cover and Art Illustrations by Barbara Frake."
They had been drawn by my own mother, nearly 50 years earlier, when she was a recent graduate of Boston University’s Fine Arts program, living in Newburyport to take advantage of cheap rent and a thriving community of artists and musicians. I was stunned that during my regular workday at the Museum, I had just happened upon my mother’s artwork. I took a picture and immediately texted her to see if she remembered working on that book. “Oh yes,” she said, “I had to draw so many teeny little bricks,” and recalled that she had spent several months on it.
International Light, Inc. at 17 Graf Road.
M.V. Electroplating Corp. at 5 Greenleaf St. in the Industrial Park, featured in “Climate for Growth”
Designed to attract new industry to Newburyport after many years of decline for the port which was no longer among the busiest in the country, the booklet highlighted Newburyport’s economic, demographic, geographic, and historical resources. The then-12 year old Lord Timothy Dexter Industrial Green was featured prominently, as were City Hall, Plum Island Airport, Towle Silversmiths, and local schools and attractions. Some of the drawings’ subjects are unchanged, enduring gems of architecture like the High School atop Mt. Rural. Some will remember that Towle Silver was wrapped from head to toe in ivy back then, but otherwise looks the same. The Industrial Park’s facilities, which by today’s standards appear at best, dated, and at worst, kind of an eyesore, were at the time the height of mid-century modernity, and were deftly captured in painstaking detail by my mother’s pencil, down to the 1970s typefaces of their signs.
Without meaning to suggest, of course, that my mother’s art was anything but an ideal vehicle for showcasing an industrial park, I couldn’t help but wonder why they would hire an illustrator rather than just printing photographs. The answer, of course, which I was slow to realize: photo editing software did not exist yet! So in order to show the buildings looking their best, without power lines, parked cars, or other obstructions, and with tidy plantings, perfect lawns, trees in bloom, etc., an artists’ renderings gave them flexibility they’d otherwise lack to make something ordinary (like a manufacturing facility) look specific and inviting. Similarly, the inside cover of “Climate for Growth” advertises the City’s “Diversified, Tasteful Architecture,” and shows the Dexter Mansion, the Customs House, the Superior Court at Bartlet Mall, plus the Newburyport Lighthouse all grouped together - a photographic impossibility made real through the artist’s imagination.
Barbara Frake's illustration, left, and the original photos she used, right.
Opportunities for illustrators like my mother, whose skill in architectural renderings and graphic design would soon be made obsolete by the advent of software like CAD and Adobe Photoshop, were still plentiful in the 1970s and early 1980s. I also found a 1981 fold-out business directory produced by the Chamber of Commerce. On its cover, a group of tourists young and old look off in the direction of Merrimac Street from Market Square, with three slightly abstract depictions of the buildings across Water Street in the background. Many will remember the slogan “Newburyport. Love at First Sight,” situated above her illustration as the directory’s headline, a simple, monochrome cover created when “cut and paste” involved an Exacto knife and rubber cement. My mother’s style was casual, friendly, detailed, yet restrained, and she drew from photographs she took and had developed at the drive-up Fotomat in Port Plaza or the Kodak store on Pleasant Street.
Left: 1981 Chamber of Commerce Business Directory, Right: Reference photo for “Newburyport. Love at First Sight” brochure.
While digital photo editing and desktop publishing software have certainly made creating promotional materials easier and cheaper, human illustrators imbue advertising with homegrown style and personality. My mother says she really enjoyed working on the Climate for Growth project and many others, mostly for banks and other area businesses. The City of Newburyport was her main focus for several years. She still has shoe boxes full of photographs she took to draw from, a time-capsule of downtown street scenes most people wouldn’t have bothered to capture given the expense of buying and developing film. “When computers made it quick and easy to create precise plans and renderings, I stayed with my fine art background and have been drawing and painting commissions of many subjects, hopefully with a human touch that computers haven’t (yet) mastered,” my mother says.
Pleasant St in the mid-1970s. Photo by Barbara Frake.
While most artists dream of having their work in a museum, having it tucked away and shelved inside an archival box isn’t exactly the fantasy. Still, my mother, who arrived in Newburyport before Urban Renewal, is proud to have helped promote Newburyport and play a small role in its revitalization. While most of her work now involves portraits, horses, landscapes, and an occasional boat, she loves Newburyport as an inspiring treasure-trove of amazing architectural details, and thinks it’s wonderful that ephemera like an events calendar from 1981 are being kept here at the Museum. They are all part of the fabric of the community, and help preserve the stories, people, and places that make us who we are…which is precisely what we at the Museum of Old Newbury are working hard to do.