A day after posting about the old The American Press, housed in a 1920s barn still standing in Beirut, my neighbor presented me what could be one of the first books published there, which he had just recently acquired from an antique dealer.
The title seems to translate roughly to “Pslams and Spiritual Songs” and below we can see the publishing date in 1921 at “The American Press.”
However the barn was built in 1922 according to historian Christine Lindner. So this book may have come from the press’s previous location at the American Mission Building, now the site of the National Evangelical Church.
So was it one of the first books published in the barn or was it one of the last published at the mission building?
UPDATE: A few of my readers–namely Andrea and Ghassan– have pointed out that the 2 on the inside cover could be a 3. Thus the publishing date could be 1931 instead of 1921, which would mean this book was actually published in the barn.
2 comments
This is a wild guess but could the date the book was published be 1931? That is how it looks to my eyes:-)
Thanks Ghassan. I was also skeptical about that 2–My friend prof. Andrea Stanton also pointed this out. Probably makes more sense that it was published in the barn.