Item: i91854

Authentic Medal of:

United States – Philadelphia Record Building
1899 Bronze Medal 31mm (10.61 grams)
HOME OF THE PHILADELPHIA RECORD 1899, Building facade corner.
BIRTHPLACE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 1776, Corner facade.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.

The Philadelphia Record was a daily newspaper published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1877 until 1947. It became among the most circulated papers in the city and was at some points the circulation leader.

The Public Record was a newspaper first published in Philadelphia on May 14, 1870; it was founded by William J. Swain, son of William Moseley Swain, who had founded the Public Ledger. At the time it was published at Clark’s Hall at 3rd and Chestnut Streets.

In 1877, William M. Singerly acquired the small-circulation paper and renamed it the Record, and lowered its price to one-cent. By 1894, The New York Times praised it as “one of the best and most widely circulated newspapers in the United States.” Despite the dire economic state at the time, the Record “held its own”, and sold 57,000,000 copies in 1893. At that time, it was the most widely read newspaper in the city and equaled the combined circulation of any two of its Philadelphian competitors. Its printing facilities were lauded as modern and both its foreign and domestic reporting as accurate and prompt. The Record’s headquarters were at 917-919 Chestnut Street, in a building designed by Willis G. Hale. After Singerly died in 1898, the paper was acquired by the Wanamakers. It was the first newspaper in Philadelphia to use the Linotype machine.

After Rodman Wanamaker died in 1928, the paper was bought by J. David Stern, owner of the Courier-Post in nearby Camden, New Jersey; he also moved the headquarters of the Record in November of that year from 917-919 Chestnut Street to the former Packard Motor Corporation Building at 317-319 N. Broad Street. Though the circulation of the Record was only 123,000 when he bought it, Stern was able to raise it to 315,000 within a few years.

During the Great Depression, the Record became one of only two morning newspapers in the city after the Public Ledger morning and Sunday editions were merged with The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1933. In 1936, the Record had a weekday circulation of 328,322 and Sunday circulation of 369,525. By comparison, it led the Inquirer during the week, when the competitor sold 280,093 copies, but trailed on Sundays, when the Inquirer sold 669,152 copies. That year, Moses Annenberg bought the Inquirer, and the rivalry between the publications significantly increased. The two papers, whose buildings were within sight of each other, engaged in a “duel of keep-the-lights-on”, in which their employees attempted to log longer workdays than their competitors. Both newspapers during this time accused the other of attempts to steal stories.

In the 1930s, as the competition stiffened between the Record and its primary morning competitor, the Inquirer, both increased their daily price to 3 cents (about $0.56 in inflation-adjusted terms). From July 1936 to 1938, the Record‘s circulation fell by 40%. In the latter year, the Record’s weekday circulation had fallen to 204,000 and its Sunday edition to 362,783. During the late 1930s, the Record, a Democratic Party-aligned publication led by publisher J. David Stern, was seen as a voice for the executives in both the federal and state governments. Red Smith, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize with the New York Times, was a sportswriter for the Record from 1936 to 1945.

The Record had a reputation for social activism. It ran stories that broke up bogus medical colleges, stopped the sale of dead bodies, campaigned against Sunday blue laws, and recommended going off the gold standard. Once, outraged at the high price of coal, the newspaper bought the output of a coal mine and sold it at discounted prices to the public. The Record made history in the early 1930s by hiring Orrin C. Evans as “the first black writer to cover general assignments for a mainstream white newspaper in the United States;” as a staff writer, Evans covered many topics including segregation in the armed services during World War II.

In 1947, the Record went out of business and sold its assets to the Philadelphia Bulletin after a drawn-out strike.
 

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the country’s status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 Moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

The United States is the world’s oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy, “in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law”. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world’s largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 33% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. It also suffers from growing levels of income inequality and wealth inequality.

The United States ranks among the highest nations in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person. The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.