ABC #016: Curtis Publishing Company and The Saturday Evening Post

Before the internet, before television, before radio, there were magazines.  Philadelphia was the place you wanted to be if you were in the magazine business.  It had the best presses, the best printers, and the railroads to get them where they needed to go.  Two of the best - Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal - came out of Curtis Publishing Company.

• Cyrus H.K. Curtis was the king of magazine publishing but could only do it with the help of two amazing editors – his wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, and his hire from Boston, George Horace Lorimer.  Lorimer needed the help of another Philadelphian, Adelaide Walbaum Neall, to make the Post a success.  And while everyone thinks of Norman Rockwell as the painter of Saturday Evening Post covers, Katharine Richardson Wireman painted covers for the Post and the Journal long before Rockwell.  And when Curtis built his headquarters Building on 6th and Walnut, he hired a local architect Edgar Viguers Seeler.  All six of these people are buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery.