Vintage Trailer Print - Mobile Studio Broadcast - Film - Radio - Republican Convention Philadelphia Civic Center

Treasures from the Trailer & Motorhome Collection at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 16, and consciously formatted to work with a 24 x 16 frame, or custom framed as you see fit. For further easy, inexpensive framing options, please feel free to contact us.

Dewey! Dewey! Dewey!

Yes, this is the wonderful and sorely missed Philadelphia Civic Center, but let me tell you, any Republican alive and in attendance at the '48 convention would tell you it was a nightmare. The heat inside with the lack of air conditioning was stifling and relentless. An infestation of pigeons meant there were surprises from the air for any and all at any moment. Some call it 'good luck' when a bird poops on you, but I've been 'good lucked' three times in my life, and beyond an uncanny ability to magically find the best parking immediately, every time I go out, my luck hasn't been raised as a result of my run ins with ol' Pidge.

Still, it was an important convention for the Republicans, and the spectacular spaceship in front is a Spartan Mobile Home made in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Spartan Aircraft, a company owned by J. Paul Getty. To address the housing shortage at the end of WWII, they switched production from Flying Fortresses to the very best portable housing units ever built.

Here, it serves as the multi tasking multi media HQ for Texas broadcaster KTHT out of Houston, with an utterly bitchin' tow rig at the front end.

NOTE... 2nd photo is for reference only and not offered for sale

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.