4" x 2-1/2"
Refrigerator magnet based on an advertising trade card from the late 1800s, promoting Mundell Solar Tip shoes, patented in February of 1878. A caption identifies the illustration as some of the students at Girard College in Philadelphia, where 1,200 boys wear Mundell's Solar Tip shoes. Mundell's plant was located at Thirteenth and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia. It employed 700 workers. In the mid 1880s the company was involved in labor disputes, and there was a costly fire at the plant in October of 1894. Besides John Mundell, other principles in the firm were John G. Croxton, henry Z. Ziegler, and A. A. Shumway. Girard College is still in operation as a boarding school, with 721 coed students in grades 1st through senior highschool. Its founder, Stephen Girard (1750 - 1831), an immigrant from France who was one of America's wealthiest citizens at the time of his death, founded the school in 1848 to educate orphaned boys.