Continental Insurance

The facade of Continental Insurance's building formed a strinkingly modern shadow box, which framed an outside projection screen for showings of a musical cartoon view of history. The theme of the pavilion was "Great Moments of the American Revolution."

"Cinema '76", a continuous 30 minute screen show, was seen from a viewing platform that held 300 spectators. In cartoon and song, the show told of Revolutionary War heroes, some obscure. Among them was Timothy "Double-barreled" Murphy who picked off a British general at the Battle of Saratoga, Deborah Sampson who fought as a Continental soldier and the Marblehead fishermen led by John Glover who successfully extricated Washington's defeated force by boat from the Battle of Long Island, and later rowed it to success at Trenton.

A Continental soldier, the company's familiar trademark, stood inside the exhibit building in a color transparency of a painting by Tom Lovell. Dioramas showed the winter encampment at Valley Forge, the Battles of Bennington, Fort Moultrie and Long Island, and on a simulated sea, Captain John Paul Jones' "Bonhomme Richard: with her guns blazing fighting "Serapis" rail to rail.



Copyright © Jeffrey Stanton 1997
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