“Back number” in contemporary parlance means “back issue.” Today we take for granted the availability of old newspapers and other periodicals, as well as their invaluable glimpse into our past. But this was not the case in the 19th century.
Particularly after the invention of the telegraph allowed news to be communicated more rapidly, an outdated newspaper was thought of as waste paper. It might be used to line boxes, decorate walls, supply toilet paper for outhouses, start fires, or simply end up being pulped. Even the great dailies routinely discarded their exchanges from other news organizations, and barely kept copies of their own papers.
African-American Robert Budd was a uniquely interesting 19th century figure who pioneered the business of old newspapers and magazines. Said late 19th-century entrepreneur Frank Burrelle: “The life of a newspaper is shorter than a butterfly’s.”
Budd was born in 1851 in Washington DC and began his working life as a bootblack. Although he attended school, his education was cut short by the Civil War. Instead, he sold newspapers in the area to soldiers, who, he found, were eager to know the news. An intrepid salesman, Budd actually rode out to the battlefields by hitching onto wagons that gathered the dead.
After the Battle of Bull Run, the participants were anxious to see the news coverage of their fight — so eager, according to the speaker, they were willing to pay $3 for an already outdated publication that usually sold for three or four cents. It was then that Budd had his eureka moment: old newspapers just might be more valuable than current ones.
Budd’s first newsstand after the war was in Philadelphia. In 1880 he moved to the city of New York and two years later set up a newsstand and shoeshine business in Greeley Square at Broadway and 32nd Street.
He sold current newspapers, but his seminal innovation was his collecting, sorting, and systematic organization of back issues, which he bought by the pound from local hotel lobbies, barber shops, reading rooms, other newsstands and bookstores (which sometimes had magazines as well).
Ultimately he started corresponding with various archives, such as the American Antiquarian Society, seeking to buy their periodicals, and soon added even out-of-town and foreign publications to his inventory.
It wasn’t long before customers beat a path to his business. Journalists used the old papers for story ideas and background on current stories. Lawyers sought evidence, in writing and dated, of certain incidents. Doctors, orators, historians, writers, politicians, reading rooms and social clubs also found uses for Budd’s archives.
Being a smart businessman, Budd set his prices based on the situation. Many prospective customers were angry that they had to pay more than the going everyday price for newspapers. In the end, though, they paid because they couldn’t get what they wanted elsewhere.
After a while, reporters didn’t just come to Budd for research. They came to write stories about him. The very first article celebrating his entrepreneur-ship seems to have appeared in 1885. Many others followed. Budd cultivated publicity. The articles about him were reprinted, not only locally, but countrywide, adding to his renown.
Budd himself bolstered his fame with a concerted advertising effort. He counted his inventory, claiming “4,008,492 copies in stock” encompassing “any paper ever published in any part of the world from 1833 to date.”
In 1889, he developed a promotional booklet, stating that his “great enterprise and success [were] becoming known the World over.” And he aggrandized the size of his business in the eyes of potential clients by listing the names of all his children — even his three-year-old — on his stationery and in the City Directory.
A decade later he was again writing to the American Antiquarian Society, this time, not to buy periodicals, but to sell them, offering The Evening Post and The Ledger. In addition, Garvey said, he reprinted articles about himself on the back of his stationery.
Some reporter somewhere had invented the moniker “Back Number Budd.” At first it rankled. But later the innovator embraced it. It was catchy. He now had a resounding title rather than just being called Budd. Wherever and whenever his signature was required, “Back Number Budd” was how he signed.
There’s no doubt about it: Back Number Budd was a success — both because his idea was visionary and because he worked extremely hard. His business day began at 6:00 am and ended at 10 pm. His wife and older sons helped. Often clients paid him to look through his papers and do their research for them. He had a good memory and read a great deal, skills which no doubt added to the value of his services.
Very little in this world, however, remains static. When Budd first established himself on Greeley Square, it was in a somewhat shabby part of town known as “the tenderloin.” But the city of New York was constantly expanding northward. Some years later, major news organizations like The New York Times and The Herald moved their headquarters to the area; department stores and gentrification followed and rents climbed.
Budd was forced to move his operation to a more affordable neighborhood. In fact, he was forced to move no fewer than nine times.
In the late 1880s, he set up a warehouse/store in Ravenswood (at 721 Vernon Blvd, right across from then Blackwell’s Island, today’s Roosevelt Island) and he moved his family there. For a while, Budd managed to continue operating another newsstand site in Manhattan as well. But by around 1905 he moved to Ravenswood entirely, because midtown rents were too high.
This was not the only challenge Budd faced. In 1895 his Ravenswood site suffered a fire. In addition, other research sources emerged. In 1911, the New York Public Library main branch reading room at 42nd Street opened, started collecting and subscribing to more newspapers, and quickly became a popular resource for reporters. And, as throughout his career, race continued to slip into the conversation.
Reporters disparaged him by writing about him in what they supposed was African-American vernacular; moreover, people did not credit his creativity and diligence, ascribing his success instead to luck, and even calling his business a swindle because of his pricing. By the time of his second, more devastating fire in Ravenswood, in 1922, which destroyed most of his papers, reporters and many others had largely forgotten about him.
Budd carried on nonetheless. He died in 1933 on Ward’s Island. In closing a recent talk about Budd, Ellen Gruber Garvey was adamant: “Though largely unheralded today, Budd laid the groundwork for our contemporary media world.”
Special thanks to prize-winning author Ellen Gruber Garvey who recently delivered a Zoom talk about Back Number Budd. Garvey has a
particular interest in Ravenswood and asks anyone with historical knowledge of the area or leads to more photos of Budd’s Vernon Boulevard establishment to please get in touch with her: ellenggarvey@gmail.com.
Garvey holds a doctorate in English and is author of two prize-winning books: Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), and The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s–1910s (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996).
Illustrations, from above: the New York Merchants’ Exchange Reading Room in the 1860s; Cover of Budd’s advertising booklet, 1889, signed “Back Number Budd” (Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Greeley Square, not far from Budd’s store, in the 1890s; Budd’s warehouse and store in Ravenswood, Long Island City; and Budd (Technical World).
A version of this article was first published in the Blackwell’s Almanac, a publication of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society. The Roosevelt Island Historical Society, founded in 1977 to recover, maintain and disseminate the record of Roosevelt Island’s heritage from colonial times to the present. Visit their website at www.rihs.us.
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