Elsie the Cow is having the best week ever! As you read in the above post, Elsie visited the New York Historical Society to help honor Gail Borden. And, other select Borden-related items will be featured in collections relating to the 1939 World’s Fair as well as advertising history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. I don’t know about you, but the history behind these two stories is fascinating to me.
In a special ceremony today, the Smithsonian received a collection of personal memorabilia documenting the Borden Company’s participation in the 1939 New York World’s Fair in commemoration of Borden’s 150th anniversary. The donation includes yearbooks, photographs, personal scrapbooks and other materials. A selection of the Borden-related collection will be on temporary display in the museum’s “Treasures of American History” exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum beginning July 12.
Jim Cavanaugh, Chester Steen and Herbert Petree were among the 60 “Borden Boys” — young agriculture and dairy college students recruited to handle the 150 cows at the Borden pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, “The Dairy World of Tomorrow.” The exhibit was designed as a showcase for the most modern, sanitary methods used in the dairy industry. These young men cared for the animals, kept careful statistics on milk production and demonstrated dairy operations to the public. Today, the three men once again accompanied “Elsie the Cow” to a major event, this time in the nation’s capital.
At the World’s Fair, Borden soon discovered that although impressed with the technology on display, most visitors really wanted to know which animal was Elsie, a fictional cow featured in the company’s recent advertisements. An especially sweet-dispositioned Jersey was swiftly identified as Elsie and introduced to the public. She became the focus of the exhibit, where she and her calf Beulah lived in a luxury stall with framed “portraits” of her ancestors on the wall. Due to her immense popularity at the fair, the Borden Company made Elsie its primary advertising icon, a role she still plays today.