Murray Hill Hotel, Manhattan, NY - 1897 | Framed Print

Murray Hill Hotel Letterhead — 1897
The Birthplace of the NCAA

A museum-quality reproduction of an original 1897 New York letterhead from the Murray Hill Hotel — eight years before this building would change American sports forever. Includes companion postcard with QR access to an in-depth narrated audio story.

The story
The hotel where American sports changed forever

On December 28th, 1905, sixty-two college presidents walked into the Murray Hill Hotel in New York with a crisis: college football was killing people. Eighteen players had died that season. President Theodore Roosevelt's son had been injured at Harvard. Colleges across the country were abolishing the sport.

The choice was simple: fix the game or lose it.

What happened in that meeting would reshape American sports forever.

This letterhead is dated May 18th, 1897 — eight years before that December afternoon. Presidents stayed here. Mark Twain stayed here. And the eight-story facade engraved on this letterhead, with its confident Park Avenue address and ornate Gilded Age typography, had no idea what was coming.

This letterhead survived.

The art is not inspired by history. It is history.

Every image in The Ephemera Collective began as a real artifact. This one was created by a master engraver over 125 years ago, long before computers or any digital tools, at a time when the main instruments of design were a skilled hand, a steel plate, and time.

Each piece is sourced from private collections and public archives, scanned at high resolution, and restored by hand to museum print standards. Pulled from the archive, not conjured from a prompt. What you're hanging on your wall is a faithful reproduction of something that actually existed — and in most cases, something most people will never see in any other form.

The story doesn't stop at the frame

Every print ships with a companion postcard. Scan the QR code on it and a narrator picks up where the frame leaves off — taking you into the Murray Hill's grand rooms, into the crisis that brought sixty-two college presidents to this address, and into the meeting that created the NCAA. Researched, written, and produced exclusively for this piece.

No subscriptions. No app. No extras to unlock. Everything included.

How it feels

This is not only decoration. It's a conversation starter — the kind of wall art that stops guests in their tracks and invites the question: “What's the story behind this?”

And now you have the answer — researched, documented, and narrated in full. This is a boutique piece, only available from Chronicles & Color, made in limited runs, from a collection you won't find on a shelf at any big box store or scrolling through an online marketplace.

Who this is for

For sports historians and college football fans who want to own the room where it all began

For lovers of New York and Gilded Age history drawn to the world the Murray Hill occupied before it disappeared

For design-forward collectors who appreciate the graphic confidence of Victorian commercial engraving

For anyone who wants to be the most interesting person in the room — and now has the story to back it up

The details

Own a piece of the story.