South Street Seaport Museum Announces Seaport Safety Broadside

South Street Seaport Museum has announced the release of the Seaport Safety Broadside, created to promote and encourage the practice of CDC-recommended behaviors to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as wearing a mask and remaining six feet apart, within the community. The Seaport Safety Broadside will be available for FREE to local businesses for curbside pick-up at Bowne & Co., 211 Water Street, on Thursday, July 30, 2020 from 11am-5pm, or while supplies last. Additional requests for free Seaport Safety Broadsides can be sent to bowne@seany.org.

"The Seaport Safety Broadside project started as a way to get back on the printing press and feel some sense of normalcy after being away for so long, as well as a response to a prevalence of coronavirus-related signs made by copy machine, created with the common Comic Sans font," said Bowne & Co. Art Director Rob Wilson. "This broadside is the first thing that our staff printed since we have been able to return to the shop. Printing and distributing these broadsides for free is a small way for the Seaport Museum to support the community that has supported the Bowne & Co. shop for so many years, while interpreting the 19th century history that is so intertwined with our South Street Seaport Historic District."

Broadsides are large sheets of paper printed on one side. From event advertisements to public announcements, they are predecessors of the modern poster. The Seaport Safety Broadside is influenced by broadsides that would have papered South Street in the 19th century, and the collection at the Seaport Museum's Bowne & Co. holds the same tools used to make those broadsides: presses and wood type. The goal of a broadside, first and foremost, is to catch the eye from a distance. Their main characteristic was the use of exuberant wood types, and their ephemeral nature meant that they would be posted for only a short time, often with handwritten notes, such as dates and times.

The South Street Seaport Museum's collections include a wide variety of pieces of ephemera, including broadsides printed in New York related to 1830s steamboat trips along the Hudson River, or goods like oysters advertised in the 1850s to be available as far west as Oswego, Elmira, and Corning, thanks to the New York and Erie Railroad. The Seaport Safety broadside features six different wood typefaces manufactured between 1840 and 1860. The broadsides were printed on a Vandercook proofing press from 1958, which is part of the Museum's working collection of printing presses and came to the museum from the New York High School for Printing. The credit was printed on the Museum's 1901 Golding Jobber press.

Wilson added, "So as you walk down the cobblestone streets, or stop for a social distanced cocktail, my hope is that replacing those Comic Sans signs with this classic broadside will help keep the neighborhood more in time with its 19th century roots, while also reminding you to make good and safe choices."