In 1896, architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue designed the original Cheltenham™ typeface for the Cheltenham Press, a New York-based publisher. Working with legibility studies indicating that readers often identified specific characters by scanning the top part of a glyph, Goodhue gave Cheltenham long ascenders and short descenders. With its large x-height improving legibility at all point sizes, Cheltenham was a bit more robust in appearance than most of the popular text types of that era, which tended to favor thinner strokes and finer serifs. Adding a bit of warmth to the design, Cheltenham also shows a subtle influence by the Arts and Crafts movement, which was flourishing at the time.
In 1975, type designer Tony Stan revived the Cheltenham design for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). Stan gave ITC Cheltenham heavier stroke weights and slightly condensed the typeface's proportions, thereby acknowledging contemporary typeface preferences, and improved the italic details.