Native American Indian Art - The Fred Harvey Memorabilia Collection

The largest collection of Fred Harvey memorabilia was hosted at the great Southwestern antique show of 2021. The display included at least 5,000 items, from paper documents, postcards, documents from the Fred Harvey company, contracts, all the way to purses that were made and sold in the trading.

Skip Gentry's collection was on display. He had started collecting Fred Harvey memorabilia around the 1980s. His collection started with a paperweight that he got at a postcard show. And from there it led to more postcards, menus and ephemera (collectible items that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.) all the way to the original sign that hung at the Alverado, which was torn down in 1972, to a toothpick with Fred Harvey's name on it.

He loved the history of how Fred Harvey civilized the west and brought the beautiful Indian arts out of the west. The display had a little of everything that was sold by the Fred Harvey company including the train food service.

The Skip Gentry family owned the Congress Hotel in Chicago since the early 1900s, which was also one of the hubs for Fred Harvey. It was that connection that drove him toward the Fred Harvey collection.

He loved native American Indian art. He bought his very first piece of Indian art when he was just seven years old. So he collected Indian items for 60 years and then concurrently started collecting the Fred Harvey items.

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