Buyways by Catherine Gudis, 2004, Excerpts
Until the 1900s, the use of billboards remained an uneven and unchecked practice. Advertising space was not yet construed as real estate. Outdoor advertising was still considered a public spectacle that encompassed all imaginable territory, from chimney tops to curbstones, and from romantic glens to roadside rocks.
A fundamental development for the billposting industry came with the novel idea to formally lease space on which to advertise, and to construct special boards on which to do so. The first recorded instance of such specially built and leased hoarding for outdoor advertising was in 1869, while the New York City Post Office was under construction.
They began to construct their own boards on which to paste bills – hence the name ‘billboards.’ The formation of billboard companies and their more formal claims to urban and rural space meant that outdoor advertising had begun to carve out a legitimate place in the rapidly changing commercial landscape of the industrial age.
In cities across the nation, advertising extended the skyward reach of construction, especially in the first years of the 1900s. Rooftop signs, now illuminated with electricity, created a new spectacle and skyline. Like the buildings rising in growing metropolises, billboards contributed to the accretion of commercial centers and formalized the incursion of pictures and texts in the public sphere.
