| | | New York facades shown in cabinet cards
New York’s prominent display of industry and socio-economic development was pertinent early in the nation’s history, but it was not until the developmental construction of the city boroughs in the mid-nineteenth century that the city was transformed by spiralling metropolitan growth. Marshes were drained, farming land built over and lower class ramshackle developments were torn apart enabling the city to evolve into a new and upwardly mobile marketplace.
Urban dwelling in mid-nineteenth century New York brought with it all the problems of a city undergoing unbridled growth. Soon, during the "Gilded Age" of American entrepreneurial efforts spearheaded by families like the Vanderbilts – Gotham, as it would later be called, was prosperous and changing so fast that it is a wonder that commerce could exist in the forms shown in these photographs. New York as we know it today bears little resemblance to the gainful opportunities that it held for immigrants looking to make their way in New World.
These cabinet cards document New York’s internal struggles to build capital and wealth through every strata of its economic fibre – they are testimonies to fixed social standing amidst rapid economic change.
Proud shopkeepers and small factory workers stand in front of their workplaces as if to testify to their contribution to the growth of their places of employment, but more generally to New York City as a whole. Inn keepers, grocers, iron workers, and marketplace owners all make up the rich tapestry of life that permutated in the works of topographic firms such as Marksville, Wolff, The Manhattan Photo View Co, N.Y Phot Co., and the Metropolitan View Company among others. These firms recorded New York’s development in the age of collodion.
The subjects range from chicken pluckers to children on the tenement steps. It is indeed a record of amazing elasticity, confined by the edges of the photograph mount rather than one’s imagination. Though the photographers were not the first or the last to discover the importance of their topography, they did so with a sensitive eye that is rare in the stereoviews of the better known firms such as Anthony or Stacy.These firms ignored the people of New York to concentrate on the architectural grandeur. Perhaps, there was just no room for the individual in a city swallowing it’s own amidst canyons of offices and tenements.
There is another subtle quality about these images that predates the work of Eugène Atget in Paris. The surreal and wonderful items found in storefront windows - an optician’s glaring sign, a mannequin hanging from a sign, or a delicious corset factory gave American cities a whisper of unguided, but lofty exuberance. These are memories from a time and a place that resonates with change - indeed some of these images hint at the cusp of modernity.
Brad Feuerhelm (August 2006)
Further research
We would like to hear from people who have information on the following New York photographic companies:
Corliss & Bancroft, Photographers, 260 West 27th Street
Gardner & Corliss, Out Door Photographers. Office 249 W. 27th Street, Room 13.
It also lists W.O. Long Fine Portraits on 395 and 687 Eighth Avenue.
W.E. Garrison Photographer. 209 E. 47th Street
S. Marksville. 343 East 34th Street
Mercantile View Company, 381 Canal Street, New York
Metropolitan View Co., No 237 East 44th Street
This firm was a partnership of the better known firms of L. Wolff & S. Marksville.
National Photographic View Co. (G.W. Heppner) No. 339 East 34th St.
The National Photographic View Co., 235 East 34th Street
The National Photographic View Co., W.O. Long and G.W. Heppner, 235 East 34th Street, New York
N.Y. Photograph Co., G.W. Bancroft, Landscape Photographer, No. 337 East 34th Street, New York
New York Photographing Co. (Corliss & Bancroft), 260 West 27th Street.
Photo View, 757 3rd Ave.
D.C. Redington, Photographer, N.W. corner 34th St. & Broadway, New York
L. Wolff, Landscape Photographer, 23 Chauncey Street
We have included backmarks within the exhibition.
Please send any information to alan@luminous-lint.com and I‘ll forward it on to Brad Feuerhelm.
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