Detroit Publishing Company

The company acquired rights to a color printing process developed by Hans Jakob Schmid of Orell Fussli & Company of Switzerland called Photochrom.

Photochrom allowed for the company to mass market postcards and other materials in color.

[1] By the time of World War I, the company faced declining sales both due to the war economy and the competition from cheaper, more advanced printing methods.

Most of the existing negatives and prints are now housed by the United States Library of Congress, which received them via the Edison Institute and the Colorado Historical Society in 1949.

Most images are visible in digital form at the Library of Congress Web site.

A photochrom postcard of Mulberry Street in New York City by the Detroit Photographic Co., c. 1900
A restored photochrom print of Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California , developed from a photograph by William Henry Jackson , c. 1900