Rare American ‘Empire Builder’ Great Northern Railway Poster, 1947

This is an American advertising poster for the Great Northern Railway company for their Route of the Streamlined Empire Builder from 1947. The top of the poster features an image of lazy boy, a blackfeet medicine man, in Glacier national park in Montana. It is a wonderfully detailed and colorful portrait of this character, framed on either side by a thick band of red with a variety of small designs outlined in white. The centre of the poster features an exciting combination of white and yellow typography reading, “Route of the Streamlined Empire Builder,” surrounded by the same deep red framing the image above. The bottom third of the poster again has the same red framing the centre part of the image on either side. At the bottom is an image of an orange and black train.

The Empire Builder – speeding into the foreground. Above the train is a sizable amount of written information, split into three columns, about lazy boy. This is a rare Mid-Century Modern period advertising poster that captures the spirit of the United States and railroad travel during the late 1940s.

This original advertising poster was printed by Brown & Bigelow St. Paul, USA, 1947 Great Northern RY. St. Paul, U.S.A.