Publisher · US

Fred Harvey

Kansas City / the Santa Fe Railway Southwest · founded 1876; postcards c. 1900–1940s

Not a printer but a publisher: the Fred Harvey Company was the restaurant-and-hotel concessionaire of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, running the Harvey House hotels and dining rooms across the Southwest and famous for its “Harvey Girls.”

It published hundreds of postcards to promote the Southwest and its hotels, but had them printed by others — chiefly the Detroit Publishing Company, and, once Detroit stopped adding images after its 1923 bankruptcy and ceased printing for Harvey in 1932, by Curt Teich and others.

Fred Harvey cards carry the company’s own catalogue numbers with an H- prefix (H for Harvey), which is not a printer’s date code.

The front of a Fred Harvey postcard from the Postcard Origins collection: Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, looking across from El Tovar, Fred Harvey number H-4192 — A Fred Harvey card — *Grand Canyon National Park, looking across from El Tovar*, the company’s own number H-4192 on the front. That H-number is Harvey’s catalogue reference, not a date.Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

A close-up of the printer's serial number on the back, reading 1A2935 — The number that *does* date it, on the back: 1A2935 — a Curt Teich serial. Run through the Teich decoder it reads **1931**, placing this card right at the Detroit-to-Teich handover in Fred Harvey’s printing.From the collection

The Fred Harvey trademark — the mark that tells you who published a card, whoever printed it.Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

Dating this publisher’s cards

US. The H- number on the front is Fred Harvey’s own catalogue reference and does not decode to a year. To date the card, find the printer’s number: a Detroit Publishing number points before 1932, while a Curt Teich number can be run through the Teich decoder. The specimen below carries a Teich serial that decodes to 1931 — exactly the period when printing for Fred Harvey was passing from Detroit to Teich.

Sources: Fred Harvey Company, the Santa Fe Railway concession, Harvey Houses and Harvey Girls, and its role as a Southwest postcard publisher: Legends of America; California State Railroad Museum; Fred Harvey cards printed by Detroit Publishing (to 1932) then Curt Teich in the 1930s: Streamliner Memories, ‘Fred Harvey Postcards’ series (drawing on Detroit Publishing history and Yolanda Youngs’ Grand Canyon postcard research). See methodology.

Compiled and edited by Julien, a postcard dealer and collector in California — every card here is one from the collection.

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