The Kodak Hoarding
Peter Kelly of Leister, England, describes himself as "a lifetime photographic collector now nearing 60." He recently spotted this fascinating article in an 1898 issue of The Amateur Photographer. The photo shows one of the earliest Kodak Girls ever, painted on a "hoarding". I had to look it up, but a hoarding turns out to be the English name for a temporary barrier around a construction site. In this case, the construction was of the brand new Kodak building. As described in the article:

"A week or two ago we had a note on the hoarding which Mr. George Walton had erected around the premises of the Eastman Photographic Company in Regent Street, under cover of which Mr. Walton's men were busy carrying out his designs for the decoration of this new Kodak depot.

A correspondent sends us a snap-shot taken in Regent Street with a cartridge-loading Kodak, showing the striking design of a lady with a Kodak which occupies the north or Oxford Street end of the hoarding. The utility of such a hoarding from an advertising point of view must be obvious, whilst decoratively it is so infinitely preferable to all but a few advertisement posters , that one feels that the step from the artistic poster to the artistic hoarding is a narrow one, already perhaps taken, and soon to be followed by others."