Glens Falls in 1923 — Anti-billboard campaign Part 1

Persuasion is more effective than restriction, the Glens Falls Woman’s Club reasoned in a strategy to stop the spread of billboards along scenic roadways, a strategy the local club hoped to take statewide.

On Feb. 23, 1923, the local club began a campaign to call on local merchants to persuade them to remove their advertising on billboards along Route 9, between Glens Falls and Lake George.

If they could convince enough merchants to pull their advertising, billboard owners, who could no longer make a profit, would remove the roadside signs, reasoned the influential women’s group which included many wives of Glens Falls merchants and executives.

“The chairman (Margaret Bowden) instructed the committee to make it clearly understood that the club will not blacklist or boycott or attempt to coerce in any way. They will simply call upon the local merchants to prove that in our own locality the billboard nuisance can be checked by united public concern, ” The Post-Star reported on Feb. 23. “They will then undertake to broadcast the success of the Glens Falls campaign over the state, and to start similar campaigns in a hundred other localities, with the aim of ultimately having a state organization.”

Of about 100 billboards between Glens Falls and Lake George, about sixty advertised local businesses.

That space would be taken over by new national advertisers instead of new billboards being constructed, the women reasoned.

“It will check the increase. Every sign taken off the boards will eventually mean one less board.”

Opposition was mounting even before the campaign began.

An anonymous letter to the editor of The Post-Star the same day suggested the group devote its time and energy to ending poverty.

The letter, signed by “An Advertiser,” said billboards were essential to a tourist economy.

“It is very well for residents in the city to exist without billboards because they know where to shop, but the tourist does not know where to go and they depend largely on the information they find on billboards.”

The writer argued that billboards are not an “eyesore,” as the woman’s group claimed.

“They are the work of art, a pleasant variation and the source of sound business advice.”

The Billboard Committee of the Woman’s Club responded the next day that billboards were seldom of any value to tourists.

“If the tourist approaches an unknown city and desires to buy cigars, he does not study the billboards to know where cigars are sold. He simply slows down in the business section and looks for a cigar store,” the committee retorted in a response published Feb. 24. “If he wants a garage, he stops at the first good-looking one. If he needs a meal or a stopping place for the night, he does not choose the hotel by the bill board, but drives around the town and picks the most promising one.”

The committee had an immediate success.

Charles Gelman, of Merkel & Gelman Department Store, wrote the committee on Feb. 26 that his company would not be renewing its billboard advertising contract.

“We realize that the scenery surrounding our immediate beautiful city of Glens Falls is a business asset that brings tourists to our section from pretty near all over the country, and we are in sympathy with the movement inaugurated by your club,” he wrote. “We will do our little share in assisting your worthy efforts in that direction.”

Maurice Hoopes, president of Finch, Pruyn & Co., endorsed the campaign in a letter on Feb. 26.

“I think you and the members of your club deserve a great deal of credit for starting and pushing this movement, and believe that a similar effort by the women of this country would end roadside national advertising, as you seem about to end roadside local advertising,” he wrote.

On Feb. 28, the Woman’s Club committee urged the Glens Falls Chamber of Commerce, Glens Falls Rotary Club, and Glens Falls Auto Club to endorse their campaign.

“Without the cooperation of these organizations, the movement will of necessity be slower, but we believe it will be continuous with a gradual increase in the right direction,” the committee wrote in a release to The Post-Star.

Dr. Annetta Barber gave an update on the campaign Feb. 28 at the Woman’s Club luncheon at the Gift and Tea Shop at the Glens Falls Insurance Co. building.

“From the sixteen local firms approached by representatives of the Woman’s Club, thirteen have taken a definite stand and have promised support of the movement to banish this form of advertising. Hotels and garages have not taken action, as yet,” The Post-Star reported on March 1.

Glens Falls Insurance Co. endorsed the campaign in a letter to the committee.

“It gives me pleasure to assure you that the officers of this company are in full sympathy and accord with the efforts of the Woman’s Club to eliminate the roadside advertising signs through the Adirondacks, even though we have in the past been numbered among the offenders of a three-year contract period.”

On March 7, it was announced at a Woman’s Club meeting that business owners in the city had agreed not to renew contracts for four series of billboards, and eight billboards would be taken down.

“A report of the unusually successful work of the billboard committee showed that forty-seven firms of this city are now in favor of abolishing this firm of advertising, fourteen having promised to discontinue their billboards,” The Post-Star reported the next day.

The club voted to have stickers printed with the slogan, “Banish the Billboards and Save the Scenery.”

On March 12, The Post-Star published a letter of endorsement from Dr. Thomas I. Henning, who wrote, in part:

“I have no idea that any word of mine will affect the situation, but I feel that I should briefly express my appreciation of the good work that the Woman’s Club is doing in endeavoring to bring about the removal of the unsightly advertising boards that line our highways and detract so much from the natural beauty of our northern country.”

At a “highly enthusiastic meeting” of the club’s billboard committee, it was voted to publish, at the club’s expense, a booklet and map directing tourists to downtown Glens Falls hotels, restaurant, garages and banks.

The booklet would include a narrative about how Glens Falls merchants supported the anti-billboard campaign.

On March 15, the women got a boost from Post-Star humor columnist Daniel O’Connell.

“Just think of all the garages that could be built with the lumber on those billboards,” he quipped in his “Sidelights on Timely Topics” column.

To be continued