By: Bradford Hudson, Ph.D. The steamship Britannia arrived in Boston Harbor on a July evening in 1840. This concluded the inaugural voyage for the flagship of the newly established Cunard Line, which has since become one of the oldest and most distinguished travel companies in the world. To commemorate the occasion, Cunard will send its […]
By: Rachel DeSimone At the historic intersection of Cambridge Street and Brighton Avenue in Allston, Mass., you might find yourself wondering if you’ve been blasted back in time, say, to the ’50s. Before you stands a small retro-diner style building with a shiny silver overhang and an enormous sign towering over the roof that reads, […]
By Mirembe B. Birigwa The legendary Pan American World Airways remains a bastion of nostalgia and cultural significance and serves as a case study in how airlines adapted their hiring practices to reflect the social movements of the 1960’s and 70’s. To maintain a competitive advantage, top companies thriving today are tasked with conveying a […]
By Bradford Hudson, Ph.D. The age of firms and the implications of organizational longevity have been recurrent topics of interest among business scholars. However, attempts to catalogue or quantify the age or number of older firms are relatively rare. Even fewer scholars have investigated the longevity of brands, as opposed to the longevity of organizations […]
By Bradford Hudson A popular cultural narrative suggests that hospitality chains are a product of modern America. Although it seems clear that multi-unit hotel and restaurant brands proliferated in the United States during the twentieth century, historical research demonstrates that the phenomenon is actually much older. The origins of hospitality chains can be traced back […]
By: Christopher Muller What is unique about being a designer and also an artist is that you are always composing and designing. It’s like breathing. It’s inherent. It’s like musicians who are always humming when they walk down the street and don’t even know they are doing it.-Morris Nathanson For more than a half century, […]
By Bradford Hudson Brand heritage is an emerging topic within the marketing discipline, which suggests that the consumer appeal of products and services offered by older companies may be enhanced by the historical characters of their brands. The partially shared nomenclature with the well-established field of heritage tourism is more than coincidental, as both concern […]
By Peter Szende The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations – also known variably as the Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace Exhibition, or the World’s Fair – occurred in London during 1851. This established the standard for industrial and cultural exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States during the next century. […]
By Bradford Hudson The advertisement for American Airlines that is reproduced on the following pages appeared in national magazines in late 1957. It is a two-page centerfold color spread depicting a couple arriving at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, after a flight on American Airlines. The discussion below provides a deconstruction and analysis of its […]
By Christina Luke South of the Charles River winds the Emerald Necklace, a series of parks that connects several neighborhoods in the Boston area. The genius behind the system was journalist turned landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, who was propelled to the national stage in 1858, after partnering with Calvert Vaux for the design of […]