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  2. E.L. Ruddy Company fonds

E.L. Ruddy Company fonds

fonds[ca. 1909]-1968Fonds 1488

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Held by
City of Toronto Archives via City of Toronto Archives
Creator
E.L. Ruddy Company Ltd.
Dates
[ca. 1909]-1968 (indexed as 1909–1968)
Level
fonds
Extent
13,250 photographs ; 21 x 26 cm or smaller; 40 cm of textual records
Scope & content
Fonds consists of 13,250 images taken between about 1909 and June 1968. Usually the name of the company is found somewhere on the billboards or large signs: Connor - Ruddy Company for the period up to about 1912 or 1913, and E. L. Ruddy Company, Ltd. thereafter. While most of the photographs document signage in the greater Toronto area, others are specific to other locations throughout Ontario, while still others are generalized template advertisements to be used in multiple locations across the province. In addition, a small number of signs are specific to the province of Quebec.Nearly all the photographs were originally taken to document outdoor advertisements, in the form of painted wall advertisements, storefront signage and billboard advertisements, created and installed by the company, but they are now of interest for a variety of reasons. Many of the in situ images which focus on the signage, for example, also include adjacent buildings, people, and events. These shots were often taken to show sign installation in progress and include workers at work. Many were taken to show E.L. Ruddy signage in the context of competitor's signage or to highlight visibilty issues. One sequence recording a well-attended Remembrance Day outside City Hall shortly after World War I, shows not only an electric "Wrigley's" sign atop a Bay Street office building that now forms part of Nathan Phillips Square (#1711), and a two-winged billboard atop Bowles restaurant where Simpson Tower later rose (#1709), but also the entire City Hall neighbourhood of the day. A small number of blue cyanotypes taken before World War I illustrate billboards for Bovril and Dia corsets, as well as locations like Hanlan's Point amusement park and old City Hall. A World War II sequence documents the now-demolished White Rose gas stations of that era, as well as various Victory Loan Campaigns located not only at City Hall, but also outside the Spadina headquarters of the E.L. Ruddy Company. Various time sequences depicting major advertising locations, like the corner of Parliament and Bloor, or the junction of Church and Bloor, also document the changing urban context for the ads. Because the E. L. Ruddy Company developed electric and neon signs, its photographs document the history of cinema in Toronto. This includes both the brightly-lit movie theatres themselves, such as Loew's on Yonge Street (#1098), and The Bayview on Bayview Avenue (#1112); as well as the domination of Hollywood films, especially during the great Hollywood Studio era of the 1930s and 1940s, but also stretching from a 1916 ad for D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" at Toronto's Grand Opera House (#868), to a June 1968 ad for Stanley Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" at the Glendale (the final photograph in the fonds, #12,539).The fonds also provides a wealth of information about the evolution of graphic design and commercial art in Canada, not only from in situ shots, but also from photographs of advertising artwork. These show mostly the finished work (such as #10 and #11: cigar ads featuring elegant, Noel Cowardesque characters), but also art-in-progress (such as #347: a promotion for the Art Deco "New Home" of the Dominion Automobile Company on Bay Street at St. Joseph). Thus the Ruddy materials may illustrate the evolution of advertising for cigarettes, or automobiles (many, like The Whippet, now gone), or appliances ... even the introduction of radio in the 1930s and TV in the late 1940s (#7622). Candidates as well as consumer products were also featured in Ruddy ads (e.g. 1910, #1728; and 1929, #3238). Thus, what is advertised, and how it is depicted, may be traced over time. Since the E. L. Ruddy Company was in the business of outdoor advertising, it is no surprise that the company used its expertise to advertise itself, e.g., along "Poster Street" at the 1929 Canadian National Exhibition, where both electric and constantly-changing conventional billboards were featured (e.g., #3147). Finally, the personnel of the company were also photographed from time to time, such as a 1915 staged shot of men in World War I uniform seated outside the 11 Wellington Street East headquarters (#828); a tourist shot of Ernest L. Ruddy himself, probably in Quebec City in the late 1920s (#1760); and diverse other photographs of workers at various sites and various tasks, including pasting up a billboard ca. 1929 (#3156).
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Subjects
World War, 1939-1945; Maple Leaf Stadium (Toronto, Ont.); Hanlan's Point Amusement Park (Toronto, Ont.); City Hall (Toronto, Ont., 1899-1965); Nathan Phillips Square (Toronto, Ont.); Grand Opera House; World War, 1914-1918; ADVERTISING; THEATRES; LAND DEVELOPMENT; ELECTIONS; THEATRES
Harvested
2026-10-21T17:13:28Z · source datestamp n/a · toronto
Original metadata as harvested (toronto)