This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from a 1910’s poster advertising American Express travel services to Hong Kong.
The vibrant colors and detail of this classic image have been painstakingly brought back to life to preserve a great piece of history.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" format is an excellent image size that looks great as a stand-alone piece of art, or as a grouped visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of 13"x19" frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
The original American Express Company was founded on March 18, 1850, through the consolidation of three companies active in the express transport of goods, valuables, and specie between New York City and Buffalo, New York, and points in the Midwest: (1) Livingston, Fargo & Company (formerly Western Express), founded in 1845 by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, later of Wells Fargo fame; (2) Wells & Co. (formerly Livingston, Wells & Co.), cofounded by Wells in 1846 and under his ownership at the time of the merger; and (3) Butterfield & Wasson, founded by John Butterfield and James D. Wasson. American Express was at first an unincorporated association of investors headed by Wells as president and Fargo as secretary.
By the end of the American Civil War, its business had so flourished, with some 900 offices in 10 states, that it attracted competition in 1866 in the formation of Merchants Union Express Company. For two years the two companies engaged in cutthroat competition and, on the verge of financial exhaustion, finally merged on November 25, 1868, to form the American Merchants Union Express Company, with Fargo succeeding as president. The company was renamed American Express Company in 1873.
On Fargo’s death in 1881, his younger brother, James Congdell Fargo (1829–1915), became president and guided the company for the next 33 years, introducing such innovations as the American Express Money Order (1882) and the American Express Travelers Cheque (1891), and opening the first European office in Paris (1895). International expansion continued with the opening of offices in other European countries, including England (1896) and Germany (1898), and in the early 1900s the company began offering services in Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Egypt, and India.
When the U.S. federal government nationalized the express industry in 1918, thereby consolidating all domestic express operations in the American Railway Express Company (see REA Express, Inc.), American Express turned almost wholly to its banking operations and its relatively new travel services, which had been launched in 1915. The company began advertising their travel services to exotic locations around the world.
The classic American Express green charge card was introduced in 1958. From the 1960s through the ’80s, American Express diversified its holdings by acquiring companies in areas such as investment banking, insurance, and publishing. It purchased Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company in 1968 (spun off in 1985), Shearson Loeb Rhoades, Inc., a leading brokerage firm, in 1981 (sold in 1993), and Investors Diversified Services, Inc., a large Minneapolis-based insurance, mutual fund, and financial advisory concern, in 1984 (spun off in 2005 as Ameriprise Financial, Inc.).
