Pictorial Mastheads

E. M. Sanchez Saavedra sent along this montage of pictorial mastheads from U.S. imitators of the Illustrated London News. He writes "Gleason's, Ballou's and Leslie's did their best to recreate an American visual look-alike for St. Paul's Cathedral dome. The [New York] Illustrated News, published by P.T. Barnum and Moses Beach, couldn't find a prominent dome on the N.Y. skyline, but settled for a crowded harbor. Leslie's used the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. Both Gleason and Leslie employed similar ornate gingerbread lettering.

The Confederate Southern Illustrated News tried to mimic the proportions with Crawford's statue of George Washington in Richmond, Virginia. Only Harper's Weekly used an original style for its masthead, downplaying the "illustrated" or "pictorial" label, although the paper's format was closely based on the ILN model. Of all those periodicals, only the original is still in existence."