Item #5861 [Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]
[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]

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[Photo album documenting the Union Printers Home, Colorado Springs.]

Colorado Springs, Colorado, [ca 1931]. Oblong 4to (7” x 11”), 114 photos (approx. 5” x 6.5” to 5.5” x 3.25”), 5 color-tinted photos mounted on black cardboard. 6 photos laid-in. Tipped-in folding menu.

An unusual photo album documenting the Union Printers’ Home in Colorado Springs, established for the care of printers sickened by the absorption of carbon-based ink into their bloodstream.

Starting in 1892, the Home provided care for infirm and/or retired members of the International Typographical Union (ITU), becoming the very first American labor-union ‘home.’ After a group of printers founded in 1852 what later became the ITU, they began discussing the establishment of a national asylum for sick and infirm members beset with serious ailments from exposure to carbon-based ink. After George W. Childs (owner and publisher of the Philadelphia Public Ledger) and his friend Anthony W. Drexel each donated $5,000 to the ITU, the organization used the money to build the Union Printers Home. When it opened in May of 1892, the average life expectancy of printers was forty-one. The care the Home provided was funded entirely by Union dues. Before being sold in 2014, the Union Printers Home treated over 25,000 printers. At its peak in the 1960s, it housed over 400 patients.

Included in this album are images of patients in bathrobes relaxing on sunny, fresh-air “sleeping porches”; reclining in chairs; in bed; on the grounds of the home’s 200-acre complex; and in the company of nurses, staff, and administrators. One especially lovely photo shows a patient seated in bed on a sleeping porch, attended by three female nurses. Pictured extensively is the castle itself (called “The Mountain” by the printers), which housed a 10,000-volume library, a sunny reading room, a 300-seat auditorium, a pool hall, Steinway grand pianos, and more. Shown here are the billiards room, a swimming pool, the in-house dairy farm, gardens, etc., and one image pictures the arched entrance to the Home, which bears the slogan—“Its bounty unpurchasable.” Several shots show the patients dressed-up in formal attire. Numerous images capture the mountainous scenery in the vicinity of the institute. A few playful images show a group of patients dressed up, some in cowboy garb and one man in blackface. Other group shots show men standing beside a water-fountain pedestal. Tipped-in is a 1931 Christmas program with numerous signatures of staff and patients, including patient room numbers and home towns.

REFERENCES: Heilman, Wayne. Union apparently giving up its Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs at gazette.com; Ward, Harkavy. The Castle on the Hill at westword.com.

CONDITION: Wear to covers, photos generally quite clean with little wear, a few images faded.

Item #5861

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