Street & Smith



Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks. Among their many titles was the science fiction pulp magazine Astounding Stories, acquired from Clayton Magazines in 1933, and retained until 1961. Street & Smith was founded in 1855, and was bought out in 1959. The Street & Smith headquarters was at 79 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan; it was designed by Henry F. Kilburn.

Founding
Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith began their publishing partnership when they took over a broken-down fiction magazine. They then bought the existing New York Weekly Dispatch in 1858. Francis Scott Street died in 1883, and Smith died in 1887. The company became a publisher of inexpensive novels and weekly magazines starting in the 1880s and continuing into 1959.

In 1933, they bought titles from Clayton Magazines, including Astounding Stories. In 1937, Street & Smith discontinued a number of their pulp titles, including Top-Notch and Complete Stories, the start of a long-term shrinking of their pulp line. In 1938, Allen L. Grammer became president. He had spent more than 20 years as an efficiency expert for Curtis Publishing Co., and made a small fortune inventing a new printing process. He moved the offices into a skyscraper. 

Demise
Street & Smith stopped publishing all their pulps and comics in 1949, selling off several of their titles to Popular Publications. Sales had declined with the advent of television. Condé Nast Publications bought the company in 1959. The company's name continued to be used on the sports pre-season preview magazines until 2007 when Advance division American City Business Journals acquired the Sporting News and merged Street & Smith's annuals into TSN ' s annuals.

Authors

 * Horatio Alger
 * Isaac Asimov
 * Lester Dent
 * Theodore Dreiser
 * Walter B. Gibson
 * Upton Sinclair
 * Jack London
 * Robert A. Heinlein
 * Clifford D. Simak

Illustrators

 * Harvey Dunn
 * J. C. Leyendecker
 * Dean Cornwell
 * Winfield Scott
 * Frank Kramer
 * Tom Lovell
 * Anton Otto Fisher
 * Amos Sewell
 * N.C. Wyeth
 * Emery Clarke
 * Walter M. Baumhaufer
 * Modest Stein

Presidents

 * Francis Shubael Smith I (1819–1887) 1855 through 1877
 * Ormond Gerald Smith; died 1933
 * Allen L. Grammer; started 1938

Timeline

 * 1855 Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith partner to buy a magazine
 * 1858 Purchase of New York Weekly Dispatch
 * 1877 Francis Shubael Smith retires
 * 1877 Ormond Smith takes over
 * 1883 Death of Francis Scott Street
 * 1887 Death of Francis Shubael Smith on February 1

Archive
Syracuse University has:
 * Dime Novels with Cover Image Files
 * Yellow Kid Image Gallery
 * Street & Smith Editorial Records