The Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania railroad displays

Abstract

Corporate image-making has long been recognized as one of the keys in understanding the rise of big business enterprises in the early twentieth century. ¹ The use of photography for these purposes in nineteenth- century America, however, is a topic which has received much less attention than it deserves. Two exceptions are Mary Panzer's treatment of photography and advertising at mid-nineteenth century and David Nye's work on photography at the General Electric Company at the end of the century. My own interest in this subject has come from my current work on industrial fairs and international expositions, particularly the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition.³ In this article I want to focus on the use of photography for corporate display at the 1893 Chicago Exposition in order to show some of the complexities of the corporate image-making process. The innovative efforts by officials to mould a unified story of transportation for the 1893 Chicago Exposition collided with corporate expectations of its exhibitors. The challenge of exhibiting within this new context were met in substantially different ways by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad.