Selling Prints for Generations

If you have an interest in 19th-century American prints, chances are good that you will one day find yourself at the Old Print Shop. The gallery is crammed with wooden cases containing maps and prints of every possible subject. The walls are hung with Currier & Ives scenes, Audubon birds, and the occasional Winslow Homer print. The warm, crowded shop has occupied the same first-floor storefront on Lexington Avenue, between 29th and 30th streets, since the 1920s. And after 110 years in business, it is as permanent a fixture of New York’s antiques scene as exists.The shop is owned and operated by the third generation of the Newman family, Robert, 52, and Harry, 47. Their father, Kenneth, 81, still works a few days each week. And with the addition of Robert’s son, Bryan, 25, who began work at the gallery three years ago, the Old Print Shop is now in its fourth generation. “I told someone once, ‘We cut our teeth on Currier and Ives,'” Robert Newman said.Founded in 1898 as a concessionary stand in the back of Wanamaker’s, a department store in the Lower East Side, the Old Print Shop moved to its present location in 1925. In 1928, Harry Shaw Newman, grandfather of the current owners bought the gallery. A year later, the Depression hit.“It was very bad,” Robert Newman said. “I can look at the ledgers and tell you that in 1932 sales were marginally more than they had to pay for the business. But things improved in ’33, and the rest is history.”Since that time, the Old Print Shop’s core product has remained American prints and antiquarian maps. Prints can be found according to category, such as sport, animals, flowers, maps, and more. Through a slim doorway, clients can leave a world of faded prints behind and step into a more modern space; the adjoining bookstore, also run by the Newmans, is devoted to art titles — some glossy and new, some rare finds. Upstairs, in a second-floor gallery for contemporary prints, the work of Chicago artist Richard Florsheim (1916-79) is currently on view.But the new does not come at the expense of the old. In March, the Old Print Shop sold a previously unknown variant of John Melish’s well-known map of America, circa 1816-20, to the Library of Congress, for more than $50,000.But a Valentine’s Day card from the 1890s can go for as little as $15. On its walls, the shop is exhibiting a selection of its stock under the title “Made in America.” Included is a rare 1866 broadside advertisement for an overland wagon route to Oregon, priced at $16,500.“They’re a highly respected prints dealer with a long history,” the head of the New-York Historical Society’s department of prints, photographs, and architectural collections, Marilyn Kushner, said. “You go in there, and you know it’s full with treasure.”It is also the type of shop that is becoming increasingly rare. “When I started working with my dad in the 1970s, there was a great gallery like ours in most cities,” Robert Newman said. “There was Goodspeed’s in Boston, Zeitlin’s in Los Angeles, Sessler’s in Philadelphia, and Nebenzal in Chicago. But they’ve either retired, shut down, been bought out, or closed.”One way the Newmans have kept their business strong is through the Internet. Today, online sales account for an increasingly important part of the gallery’s transactions. “The Internet has attracted a new clientele,” Harry Newman said. “Often we have two, three, or four orders a day, usually on the lower end. You don’t usually get $10,000 orders on the Web site, but it does attract attention. Serious collectors will go online and then visit the gallery.”And of course, old age has its advantages. Clients who visit the shop frequently tend to cultivate their children’s tastes, which leads to long-standing relationships with collectors. “A number of years ago, I found a sales ledger from 1900 and 1910,” Robert Newman said. “What made me laugh was that the last names of the buyers are the last names of my clients today, 100 years later.”150 Lexington Ave., between 29th and 30th streets, 212-683-3950.

Selling Prints for Generations

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