In the 19th century, American courthouses, post offices and town squares were papered with colorful broadsides — posters advertising everything from theater events and places to visit to calls for political action. By the late 1800s, color lithography, or chromolithography, was the most inexpensive way to make these reproductions.
This lithographed broadside of Mount Vernon was likely produced by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1876. It was probably distributed from the Virginia Pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition — the first World’s Fair held in the United States — to encourage tourism. It was published by one of the country’s leading lithographic firms, a Baltimore company founded by German artist Edward Sachse. By the time this poster was printed, Sachse had died, and the company was being run by his brother.
Mount Vernon was a popular subject in 1876. The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which purchased the estate in 1858 and still owns it today, produced and sold a 25-cent guidebook that year to capitalize on centennial fervor. Such souvenirs helped to support their ongoing mission: maintenance of the mansion and education about the U.S. government’s founding principles.
On the third row of the broadside, an image shows an African American man leaning against George Washington’s tomb, selling canes made from trees on the estate. The tomb was a popular tourist destination as early as the 1850s, when walking sticks were first sold to passengers from the steamboats the Washington family allowed to dock there. This image strongly resembles one depicted on sheet music for the 1850 ballad “Washington’s Tomb.”
