Northwestern Cycle Co., Minneapolis — 1898 | Framed Print

Northwestern Cycle Co., Minneapolis, MN — 1898
The Man Who Sold Bicycles — Then Sold Minneapolis Its First Automobile.

A museum-quality framed print of an original 1898 letterhead from the Northwestern Cycle Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota — a steel-engraved portrait of one of the city's most forward-thinking merchants, at the peak of America's greatest bicycle craze. Includes a companion postcard with QR access to a fully narrated audio story.

The story

In 1898, Leslie H. Fawkes was selling bicycles. He was already thinking about what came next.

Fawkes ran Northwestern Cycle Company at 601 First Avenue South in Minneapolis — a full-service dealer selling bicycles and sundries to a city that had fully surrendered to the wheel. Minneapolis in 1898 was in the grip of one of the greatest consumer crazes in American history, and Fawkes was at the center of it.

This letterhead documents a business dispute — Fawkes writing to a bell manufacturer in a small Connecticut town that produced an estimated nine out of every ten small bells sold in North America, demanding his inventory before the spring rush arrived.

It is also a document from the final years of the craze. Most dealers didn't see what was coming. Fawkes did. He would go on to become the first automobile dealer in Minneapolis — and the building that bore his name still stands in the city today.

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.

At the top of this letterhead: a woman on a bicycle, moving with the kind of freedom the 1890s were only beginning to allow. It is one of the defining images of the era — not just a product illustration, but a statement. We restored it. We framed it. Pulled from the archive, not conjured from a prompt.

The story doesn't stop at the frame

Every framed print ships with a companion postcard. On it: a QR code and short URL linking to an in-depth narrated audio story — the story of Northwestern Cycle Company, the man who built it, and the decade that changed how America moved.

Researched, written, and narrated exclusively for this piece. No subscription. No app. Just scan and listen.

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, 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 the collector who wants something on the wall that actually means something — not a print, a piece of documented history.

For the cycling enthusiast who knows the sport didn't start with carbon fiber — it started with chain drives, steel frames, and a country that lost its mind over the wheel.

For the design lover drawn to the precision of 19th-century intaglio engraving — a woman in motion, rendered in ink at the exact moment that motion became possible.

And for the gift-giver looking for something genuinely rare.

The details

Own a piece of the story.