The Curtis Publishing Company

The Curtis Publishing Company was founded in 1891 by publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis, who published the People's Ledger, a news magazine he had begun in Boston in 1872 and moved to Philadelphia in 1876. The company’s most famous publication was the Saturday Evening Post which had its roots in Ben Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette and went as far back as 1728. The Post became one of the nation's most popular periodicals in the early 20th Century with a circulation of one million in 1906 peaking at more than six million in 1960, just before the rise of television initiated the decline of popular periodicals. The Post was famous for the quality of its illustrations and commissioned many of Norman Rockwell’s famous illustrations, including the Four Freedoms series which became emblematic of FDR-era America.