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Prepared from the source scan: surroundings removed and the sheet levelled where required. The source record remains available below.
The Posters That Went to War · Over There
First Call: I Need You in the Navy This Minute!
James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) · U.S. Navy recruiting, car card for New York street cars and subways, 1917
Format
Archival pigment giclée on museum-grade matte art paper, color-managed to the source scan — the flat inks and stone grain intact. The 40×60 is the room-changer.
Size
$39.00
What it is
A colour lithograph car card James Montgomery Flagg drew for Navy recruiting in 1917, 28 by 51.5 cm, made to hang in street cars, buses and subway cars, from the Willard and Dorothy Straight Collection.
Why it matters
Flagg first drew his Uncle Sam for the cover of Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper on 6 July 1916 and used him again in 1917 for I Want You for U.S. Army. This is the Navy's version, sending men to the recruiting stations at 34 East 23rd Street in Manhattan and 115 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
What to notice
The long, low sheet of a transit card, with Uncle Sam at one end and the line beside him: our country will always be proudest of those who answered the first call.
Uncle Sam, sized for the ride to work.
Provenance
- School
- The Great War Poster (United States and the world)
- Designer
- James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960)
- Campaign
- Enlist · Uncle Sam and Columbia
- Service
- Navy
- Format
- Transit poster
- Poster published
- U.S. Navy recruiting, car card for New York street cars and subways, 1917
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 2001699144 · POS - WWI - US, no. 314 (C size) [P&P]
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-11-02. Commons licence re-read 2026-11-02 on the Commons mirror of the same LoC scan: Public domain (PD-1923, PD-Layout, PD-US-expired). James Montgomery Flagg died in 1960; in life-plus-70 countries the work stays protected until 1 January 2031. Public domain in the US by publication before 1931; legal sign-off owed before any EU or UK order (the Dudovich precedent).
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