This year marks the 100th anniversary of the original Loud Speaker newspaper. It ran for 39 years as a truly local and original Ivyland publication, but its history is still entwined with Ivyland to this day.
Ivyland’s 100th anniversary booklet states this about the newspaper:
The Loud Speaker, a 24-page monthly publication founded this year (1925), kept Ivyland informed of local happenings in the borough and surrounding area, interjected with fine advertising. Harry H. Eddowes edited the paper, and Ralph Eddowes produced it. It was discontinued in 1964.
Harry H. Eddowes, or H.H. Eddowes as he was known in his printing business, was a long-time resident of Ivyland Borough. His printing business covered a wide variety of items: posters, letterheads, business receipts, and envelopes to name a few. In 1925, he began The Loud Speaker. It ranged from eight to 24 pages. It was distributed free to businesses, but subscriptions were available for 25 cents a year in 1925. There was little news in the publication. It was more comparable to the Farmer’s Almanac. The Loud Speaker was initially distributed monthly and then later twice a month until it ceased publication in 1964 due to Harry’s declining health. He passed away in 1965.
A chance encounter in 2013 led to an amazing discovery. The house at 96 Chase was being restored and resident and Ivyland Heritage Association member Tony Judice met one of the people working on the house. He recounts what happened then:
“At this time, copies of The Loud Speaker were few, and any that we had were in poor condition. This young man had a pristine copy of a 1925 edition. He said there were boxes of them that they were going to dispose of. (Residents) Ed Oldroyd, Nate Pero, and I immediately went and spoke to one of the owners who allowed us to dumpster-dive and also go into the garage, where we discovered dozens of boxes of uncirculated Loud Speakers. Some were not salvageable, but many were in very good condition. We moved them by the truckload into the basement of the Willard Avenue schoolhouse, where Ed and I spent the next year poring over all of them and, in the end, saving several copies of almost every edition published. I am into the 1930s in the quest to digitize all of them.”
Unfortunately, it was learned later that the original printing press had also been in that garage but had previously been discarded. Still, finding and preserving those original copies was significant to the history of our borough. So much credit goes to Tony and Ed, who worked very hard to save piece of our past. The idea of The Loud Speaker was resurrected in the 1980s by Borough Council Member and President Bob Severn. He was a graphic artist by trade and recreated a short, black-and-white quarterly newsletter for the borough from his home on Gough Avenue. It included retro cartoons and other wisdom, along with borough news items, as an homage to Eddowes’s publication. After Bob’s passing, the publication eventually stopped.
Then, in April 2019, yet another version of The Loud Speaker was born and continues today. Today’s Loud Speaker is written, designed, and published by Group G Marketing Partners, which occupies the Ivyland schoolhouse. We try to bring a little of that spirit back to the borough with an updated publication that has its roots in the past, its focus on the present, and a respectful nod to its rich history.
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Geff Rapp is the Chairman of Ivyland Borough’s Zoning Hearing Board and Senior Managing Partner at Group G Marketing Partners, a full-service marketing agency based in Ivyland.
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