Elegant Old Bills

A while ago, I came across a box of paper ephemera, and couldn't resist going through it, sheet by sheet. What struck me was the elegance of many of the bills. They were all engraved with either the logo of the company, or the building in which it was located. Here are a few of my favorites.

Most of the engravings were either done by Hoen Lithography or E. Sachse & Co., who did the incredible map of Baltimore. 

Our Main Staircase

The staircase in our 1909 building is one of its signature design elements. It moves up through our building from the basement to the fourth floor where Marcia's apartment was located. 

On the fourth floor, the stairs are about six feet wide. As you move down through the building, the stairs get wider and wider, causing a funnel-like effect to bring the light through the building. You can get an idea of the size of the openings by the dark spots on the blueprint below. 

There is a skylight at the top of the stairs which we opened several years ago. Read about it here. Opening the skylight made a world of difference to the staircase which had always been very, very dark. 

Each set of stairs is actually three sets, intersected with two landings, as you can see in the image above. From the basement to the third floor, the stairs are Calacatta marble in grey and white pattern. The landings are one-inch by one-inch marble tesserae tiles, surrounded by black marble. 

Originally, there were windows along the south side of the staircase, which would bring in both air and light. When we connected the two buildings, we used that space to add bathrooms and an elevator. You can see that on the blueprint on the right of the first floor.

Because you could suddenly see the whole aspect of the staircase when the skylight was uncovered, we decided to hang some portraits in the stairwell. You can read about it here. 

I recently made a little video about our staircase, which you can watch on YouTube. 

The Mistake on the Seal!

I am going to tell you a story about MedChi’s historic seal.

It became part of our “brand” soon after our founding in 1799. Eventually, it was one of several bookplates for book collections that were funded by donors, such as the Frick Family.

It was a rather dour looking piece, with the figure of Aesculapius with his serpent-entwined staff. It was originally rendered in red and black, with deep-set eyes. He was known as “old potato head.”

In our centennial book, there is a slightly different version of the potato head with more hair and more rays emanating from his head.

After we moved into the new building in 1909 and the library continued to grow, we asked the medical illustrator, Max Brödel to design an updated seal for us. You can see the date on Brödel’s original sketch of the seal.

It wasn’t until the 1930’s that it was finally engraved, and hundreds of copies were printed to place in our book collections.

Soon, we received a letter from one of our members, letting us know that there was a mistake on the seal. Around the bottom edge of the seal are a few words in the Greek alphabet. One of the letters is incorrect. 

And because that letter is wrong, it changes the meaning of the sentence! It should read, “A physician is of more value than many other men for the dressing of wounds and the stilling of pain,” from Homer’s Illiad, Book II, Line 514.

The mistake was combining a Greek Z and a Greek X, when there is no such letter. It should have been three parallel lines, with the middle one a little shorter.

The mistake was corrected, and new bookplates were printed.

We still have some digital copies of the mistaken seal, but I try and check to make sure we’re using the correct one.