?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
FRANK VININC SMITH (DATES UNKNOWN) "1915" BOSTON EXPOSITION. 1909. 41 3/4x27 1/2 inches, 100 3/4x70 cm. Walker Lith. & Pub. Co., Boston. Condition B / B+: restored losses along vertical and horizontal folds and at edges; repaired tears and creases in margins and image. The Boston 1915 Exposition was a progressive plan to transform and modernize the City of Boston, improving the way the city was governed, planned and developed. Begun in 1909, the plan was "to use the six years immediately preceding 1915 as a time to coordinate the individual efforts of local civic, educational, recreational, health, labor, and charitable organizations to develop a comprehensive physical and social plan for the city." (Building a New Boston, by Thomas H. O'Connor, p. 70) The idea was that after six years of hard work it would all culminate in a huge world exposition in Boston in 1915, "putting the city on display as a model of progressive government, efficient services, prosperous industries, beautiful public places, enlightened labor policies, and inexpensive housing." (ibid). The effort quickly fell apart and the idea of a world exposition in Boston was never realized. This previously unreferenced image promotes the inaugural exhibition of the movement at the Old Art Museum on Copley Square. It is an effusively optimistic and hopeful image, displaying the dawn of a magnificent new day over the city of Boston, as well as being extremely modern in its depiction of a Curtiss bi-plane. In addition to being one of the earliest American posters to promote Boston, it is also one of the earliest American aviation posters.
