A collection of approximately 28,000 glass plate negatives showing views of a variety of subjects.
Scope and Contents:
The major part of the collection, series 1-4, contains nearly 28,000 glass plates, including original stereoscopic negatives, interpositives, and both negative and positive non-stereoscopic plates used to produce lantern slides and paper prints. The photographs were taken all over the world. The majority are from the Underwood & Underwood active files, but plates from other publishers are also included. Series 5 is a small collection of paper stereographs. Series 6 contains 4 Underwood & Underwood descriptive sales catalogs and 1 H. C. White & Co. catalog (numbers on the Underwood plates correspond to the numbers on catalog captions). Series 7 is apparatus--four stereoscopes.
The approximately 28,000 glass plates in this collection have not been completely inspected at this point due to handling problems associated with asbestos contamination of the collection. A preliminary survey, however, indicated that the selections of images cover the full range of subject matter encompassed by the "Underwood Travel System." The subject matter is most easily comprehended by consulting one of the Underwood sales catalogs which accompany the collection. The catalog captions are arranged geographically, for the most part, and generally represent an organized "tour" which could be purchased as a boxed set, complete with maps and guide book, although individual images could be purchased separately. The catalogs indicate that the Underwood files were continually updated, for extensive modifications in some of the sets can be seen from edition to edition, and actual inspection of published stereographs shows that alternate views with identical Underwood catalog numbers were substituted from time to time, and that new subjects (with new catalog numbers) were sometimes introduced into the sets and old subjects were retired. There are glass plate negatives as well as positives in this collection. The positive images were probably interpositives used for the production of duplicate negatives. Some of the original stereo negatives were cut apart and the images transposed; they were then bound with an additional glass support (in many cases the tape has deteriorated). Half stereo positives also appear in the collection: these probably were intended for use in lantern slide production. Frequently a drawer of plates contains several incarnations of a single image, including the original negative, a copy negative, an interpositive, and a positive lantern slide. In other cases a drawer may contain only a single mode, e.g., original negatives, while corresponding positives and/or lantern slides appear in separate drawers.
A small quantity of the Underwood & Underwood plates are not from the Travel System, but represent humorous and genre subjects which were cataloged and marketed separately. The work of several other publishers, usually without Underwood catalog numbers, is also represented, including H. C. White, American Stereoscopic Company, and J. J. Killela.
The arrangement of the collection seems to reflect a combination of permanent reference storage as well as active use files. The apparent anomalies or inconsistencies probably indicate the pulling of plates from permanent files into temporary work files, and the collection may consist of a combination of permanent storage and temporary working files. As the drawers do not appear to have been renumbered according to any easily discernible pattern, they have become intermixed and rearranged in storage. The contents of each drawer usually have been found in good order, however, and the plates were nearly always arranged numerically,usually with the low numbers at the rear of the drawer and the highest number at the front. As the plates have been rehoused, the reverse numerical order has been corrected. When all the plates have been rehoused and inventoried, consideration will be given to general collection rearrangement and renumbering of the containers, either strictly in numerical order or topically and/or geographically with a numerical sequence within each group.
The collection is in good condition for the most part, although conservation attention will be required. There is a certain amount of emulsion peeling or frilling at the edges of some plates, but this is a condition to which emulsions on glass frequently are prone. A few plates, bound in a sandwich arrangement between cover glass and acetate facing the emulsion, have suffered severe damage, peeling, and image losses through the apparent ferrotyping and sticking of emulsion to the plastic, probably under conditions of high humidity at some stage. There is surprisingly little glass breakage within the collection.
Most of the stereoscopic negatives and many of the positives are defaced with a double "XI' scratched into the emulsion of either the left or right side, as described above in the historical note. Of particular interest and presumed rarity are cards found interfiled with plates in many of the drawers. These cards, filed by Underwood (i.e., catalog) numbers, bear printing'or production dates and notes, along with the unique, chronological accession numbers which the company assigned to each plate, regardless of the "active" number which it might eventually receive. A check mark on a card usually refers to a plate actually in the collection and with which the card is found physically associated; additional accession numbers without check marks listed on the cards possibly refer to variant views which were discarded or may in fact be in the Keystone Mast Collection (pending further research). For ease of handling and in the interest of conservation, the cards have been separated from the plates within each drawer and are arranged as a group at the rear, but can still be located easily. Frequently when a plate and/or its original envelope does not bear both the "active" and accession numbers, the missing number can be located on one of these cards.
Photographers represented include Herbert G. Ponting and Clarence W. White. A photographer and/or publisher named J. J. Killela is also represented.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in seven series. Series 1, 2, and 3 are each divided into negative and positive subseries. Plates are arranged numerically in groups based on geographical and subject content. Controlled at the series level in the finding aid and at the item level in a computer database.
Series 1, H. C. White glass plates
Series 2, American Stereoscpopic Co. glass plates
Series 3, Underwood & Underwood glass plates
Series 4, Broken glass plates
Series 5, Original company catalogs
Series 6, Paper stereographs
Series 7, stereoscopes (viewers)
Biographical / Historical:
Underwood & Underwood was established at Ottawa, Kansas, by the young brothers Elmer and Bert Underwood in 1882. They initially operated as distributors for eastern photographers' stereographs to new markets in the West. Their activities included door to door canvassing with views by Charles Bierstadt, J. F. Jarvis, and Littleton View Co.(1) Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, opened a branch office in Baltimore in 1887.(2)
Soon Underwood & Underwood and other large stereograph publishers began recruiting college students to work as salesmen during summer months (1890). Underwood and Underwood claimed that their organization alone sent out as many as 3,000 college students in one Summer [sic]. With the other ... big companies each employing more than 1,000, it is easy to understand how the countryside of the Nation literally swarmed with stereograph salesmen throughout the summer months! ... The competition between the salesmen themselves was likewise aggressive, with no holds barred. Many successful business and professional men of today relate with considerable pride that they got their start on their careers in this practical and very effective school of salesmanship.(3)
The company moved its main office from Ottawa, Kansas to New York City (1891),(4) and gradually began to publish its own stereographs. Bert Underwood finally took photography lessons from M. Abel in Mentone, France during the same year.(5) B. L. Singley, erstwhile salesman for the Underwood & Underwood and James M. Davis & Co. firms, in 1892 formed the Keystone View Company of Meadville, Pennsylvania, which was to become Underwood & Underwood's chief competitor and imitator.(6)
Underwood & Underwood entered the education market (1895) by producing packaged sets of 100 or more stereographs with descriptive texts.(7) From 1897 the firm employed full time staff photographers as well as free lancers. By 1901 the Underwoods were publishing 25,000 stereographs per day (i.e.,total number of cards). Increasing production levels led them to gain control of the Jarvis, Bierstadt, and William H. Rau photoprinting facilities in 1897 1898.(8)
The Keystone view Company created its own Educational Department in 1898. This division sustained the Keystone View Company past the period of the stereograph's popularity. In this year Underwood & Underwood reprinted Oliver Wendell Holmes's series on the stereograph and stereoscope which originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly between 1859 and 1863. This eighty page booklet included testimonials from eminent scholars on the value of the stereograph in education. The company had been test marketing what itlater called "The Underwood Travel System." This consisted of a boxed set of stereo views of a country or region, a guide book describing the significance of the places shown, and a map showing their location and the viewpoints from which the stereographs were taken. Captions on the backs of the stereographs were sometimes printed in six languages.(9) As stereographs began to be used in schools as visual aids, the firm promoted its Travel System with endorsements from prominent educators, citing the usage of the system by various schools and universities.(10)
The H. C. White Company, which had manufactured stereoscopes for several decades, entered the stereo publication field in 1899.(11) Much of its production seemed to imitate Underwood & Underwood cards, including typography and the color of mount stock. Underwood & Underwood expanded into news photography by 1910 and gradually decreased its stereographic work. Few new stereo negatives were added to the file after 1912 except for a flurry of activity during the early war years, 1914 1916. The total number of Underwood & Underwood "titles" in stereo were from 30,000 to 40,000 (there might be a substantially larger number of actual negatives, since the files frequently were updated with newer views for old catalog numbers).(12)
Underwood & Underwood sold a portion of its negative file to the educational division of Keystone View Company in 1912,(13) and between 1921 1923 conveyed to this competitor their remaining stereo stock (presumably both cards and negatives) and rights.(14) In addition to its involvement as a news photographic agency, the company eventually opened portrait studios which flourished during the World war II years. A former Smithsonian employee, Vince Connolly, worked for Underwood & Underwood, which competed with Harris & Ewing in general portrait work during that period: he did portraiture and other photography, but says he was unaware of his employer's earlier stereo publishing activities.
Underwood & Underwood donated approximately 6000 negatives to the Section of Photography of the Division of Graphic Arts (1964). These photographs are primarily 4" x 5", captioned glass plate and film negatives. The subjects are news events and theatrical, sports, and political subjects of the early 20th century. In a letter to the Smithsonian of March 25, 1966 (in accession number 270586), Mrs. John M. Stratton described another collection of Underwood & Underwood photographs, stating that her husband had been a partner in Underwood & Underwood Illustrations and owned Underwood & Underwood News Photos. In November of the same year Mr. and Mrs. Stratton donated this collection of glass plates by Underwood & Underwood and other publishers to the Division of Photographic History (then the Section of Photography of the Division of Graphic Arts) . This material consists of both negative and positive stereographic plates, as well as non stereoscopic plates, chiefly copies made from the stereographs, with some catalogs, stereoscopes, and other material. The donor estimated 12,900 plates, but in 1983 the Smithsonian Institution inventory yielded a total of approximately 28,000 plates.
The Keystone View Company's stereoscopic production continued much later than Underwood & Underwood's. It was not until 1939 when declining interest in stereography led the firm to discontinue stereograph production and enter the field of visual optometrics. The stereoscopic negative collection, including material obtained from Underwood & Underwood and other firms, was placed in storage in concrete vaults. The Mast family of Davenport, Iowa, eventually purchased the collection in 1963, and in 1977 donated the collection to the University of California for its California Museum of Photography in Riverside. The University took physical possession of this vast collection in 1979.(15)
Many of the Underwood & Underwood plates donated by the Strattons (which were transferred to the Archives Center in 1983), in effect have been cancelled by having diagonal lines (double "X" marks) scratched into the emulsion of either the left or right image of each stereo pair (never both sides). These cancellation marks do not appear on the Underwood & Underwood plates in the Keystone Mast Collection in Riverside. This leads to several theories: (a) that these cancellations were in fact the reason that the Smithsonian plates were not purchased by Keystone in either 1912 or 1921, since Keystone clearly intended to use the Underwood material for stereograph production and the defaced plates would be of no value to them for this purpose; or (b), as stereo collector John Waldsmith suggests, that the cancellations were part of an agreement between Underwood & Underwood and Keystone: Keystone may have asked Underwood & Underwood to cancel one side of each stereoscopic plate not being sold to Keystone so that Underwood & Underwood would no longer be able to compete with Keystone in the stereo market. The defaced plates, as well as other material which Keystone did not purchase, apparently remained in Underwood custody and eventually were acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Stratton. The cancellation marks in the Smithsonian's collection are the subject of further conjecture. Edward Earle at Riverside feels that, since Underwood & Underwood sought to abandonded stereograph production much earlier than Keystone's departure from the field in order to enter the non stereoscopic lantern slide market, the cancellation may have served to indicate which side of each sterescopic pair should be converted to lantern slide production use; the existence of the 4" x 5" copy negatives and positives from stereographs in this collection seem to corroborate this. The Underwood & Underwood conversion from stereograph to lantern slide materials seems to coincide with the ascendance of lantern slide projection as visual aids in schools. The company apparently modified the type of photographic product which they published at least partially in recognition of this new educational trend.
NOTES
1. edward W. Earle, ed., Points of View: The Stereograph in America A Cultural @ Visual 'g . E!Ltory, Rochester, F.Y., Th Studies Workshop ress, 1979, p. 60; William Culp Darrah, The World of Stereographs, Gettysburg, Pa., 1979, p. 46.
2. Tbid., p. 62.
3. George E. Hamilton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, His Pioneer SLtuereoscope and Later Industry, New York, New )men Society, 1949, p. 17, quoted in Points of 1=e w:, 6 4 . P.
4. Points of View., p. 66.
5. Darrah, p. 47.
6. points of View, p. 66.
7. Ibid., p. 68.
8. Darrah, p. 47.
9. Points of View, p. 70.
10. Howard S. Becker, "Steteographs: Local, National, and International Art Worlds," in Points of View, p. 95.
11. points of View, p. 72.
12. Darrah, p. 48.
13. Darrah, p. 48, quoted in Points of View, P. 82.
14. Darrah, p. 48.
15. Chris J. Kenney, introduction to "Perspective and the Past: The Keystone Mast Collection," CMP Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1982.
Related Materials:
California Museum of Photography, University of California--Riverside, Riverside, California 92521.
Underwood & Underwood stereographs in this collection and the Smithsonian Underwood & Underwood Collection originally were components of the same company file.
Provenance:
Collection donated by June Stratton (Mrs. John M.) on December 19, 1966.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. The original glass plate is available for inspection if necessary in the Archives Center. A limited number of fragile glass negatives and positives in the collection can be viewed directly in the Archives Center by prior appointment. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Fritz Henle, 1909-1993 die Quadratur der Schönheit [Ausstellung und Katalog, Brigitte Buberl ; mit Beiträgen von Helmut Gernsheim, Enno Kaufhold, Günter Metken]
This collection is primarily the work of one individual, Donald Harvey Sultner, known professionally as Donald Sultner-Welles (1914-1981). The collection forms a written and visual record of Sultner's family, life, and career from 1913-1980. Its major strength is Sultner's photographic documentation of the world during his travels, ca. 1950-1980. Work by other photographers and artists, correspondence, greeting cards, and contemporary memorabilia and ephemera are included, along with fewer than fifty examples of earlier materials, ca. 1790-1900, collected by Sultner.
The entire collection reflects Sultner's lifework and interests. Housed in boxes the collection is organized into eleven series: Personal Papers; Professional Papers; Lecture Materials; Biographical Materials; Transparencies; Photoprints; Photonegatives; Prints, Drawings, Mixed Media; Audio Tapes; Miscellaneous; and Steve Eyster Addenda. The arrangement within each series is based as closely as possi-ble on Sultner's own organization of the materials. However, in several instances similar materials were found separated and have been placed together. In addition, obvious filing mistakes and spelling errors have been corrected. The spelling of geographic place names is based on Official Standard Names prepared by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Office of Geography, U.S. Department of the Interior. Not all names given by Sultner were found in the gazetteers, so there may be errors.
The bulk of the collection consists of 2-1/4-inch by 2-1/4-inch color transparencies (Series 5). However, the manuscript materials (Series 1-4) provide a detailed complement to the transparencies. For example, from the mid-1950s until the late 1970s, Sultner kept a travel diary (Se-ries 1). Written on the backs of postcards, this stream-of-consciousness journal reflects not only his daily trips, but his impressions of the countries and thoughts on his photography. A juxtaposition of cards with images is especially useful in understanding what Sultner photographed as well as why and how he photographed it. Sultner's professional corre-spondence (Series 2) documents the various types of groups before which he performed and equipment manufacturers dealt with for cameras, projectors, and so on. Notes, drafts, and final lectures (Series 3) present the performance side of Sultner. This material, when viewed with tapes of concerts and slides, begins to recreate the photo-concert as Sultner presented it. Scrapbooks (Series 4), kept by Sultner from the 1940s to the 1980s, present Sultner's life and career in chronological fashion.
The transparency portion of the collection (Series 5), containing over 87,000 images, is especially rich because of its documentation of the countries of the world. People are seen at their daily tasks, such as washing clothes, marketing, shopping, and eating. Cities are documented as they changed over the years. Two areas in particular will be of spe-cial interest to European and Asian researchers. The first is Sultner's USIS Asian tour in 1959. He visited Japan, Java, India, Korea, the Phil-ippines, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The serene, prewar cities and coun-tryside of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam evince nothing of the devastation to come in the 1960a and 70s.
The second area of interest is Sultner's passion for documenting archi-tecture. As a guest of the German government in 1954, Sultner documented the devastation of World War II and photographed both the reconstruction of bombed buildings and the construction of buildings reflecting "new" postwar architectural styles. In addition to photographing post-WW II styles, throughout his career Sultner documented Palladian, baroque and Rococo architecture. This interest manifested itself in several of his lectures.
A third subject area of interest to Sultner was gardens. Among his first lectures following his USIS tour was "Gardens of the World." Sultner de-veloped this theme into an ongoing commitment to ecology, culminating in a filmstrip, "The Time is Now" (Series 10), prepared for the Hudson River Conservation Society in the 1960s. Carl Carmer, a noted author, wrote the text for the filmstrip. Sultner's taped interviews, lectures, and program music (Series 9) complement the transparencies. During his USIS-sponsored Asian tour in 1959, Sultner recorded impressions of his trip on tape. Interviews with people living in the countries he visited, radio interviews, and his own personal reflections are included. Of particular interest are his "No Harm Asking" interviews in Manila (tape #2), his interview of two French hotel managers in Saigon discussing post-French control conditions (tape #9), and--perhaps the most unusual--his discussion with Erna Hanfstaengl about her personal relationship with Adolf Hitler (tape #107). Scripts for lectures (Series 3) round out the documentation of Sultner's profes-sional work.
Because of the arrangement of the transparencies, it is necessary to check several areas for the same subject. For example, Vietnam images are in the "World" section alphabetically under Vietnam (box 81). Sult-ner also lectured on Vietnam, so there are Vietnamese images in the "framed subjects" (Boxes 137-138). Another example, perhaps more compli-cated, but more common to Sultner, was his distinguishing between images of unidentified "People" and identified "Portraits." Transparency stud ies of human beings will be found under the subseries "People." "Subjects --Portraits," various countries in the subseries "World," and "Lectures." There are also individuals in the black-and-white photoprints (Series 6), and photonegatives (Series 8). The painter and print-maker Charles Shee-ler appears in a number of locations, as does tenor Roland Hayes. Another area of complexity with regard to people concerns the transparencies and negatives. Sultner interfiled his transparencies and negatives of iden-tified individuals. For appropriate storage, these two different formats have been arranged in separate series. Therefore, instead of container lists for the two series, there is a combined alphabetical index to both (pp. 166-206).
Of tangential interest are the photoprints (Series 6), etchings, wood-cuts, and other prints (Series 8) collected by Sultner. One particular subseries of interest contains photographs presented to Sultner by Asian photographers during his 1959 tour. Over 45 images were given to Sultner and represent the standards of camera-club photography in the 1950s. Thesecond subseries consists of over 25 prints by the Italian-American art-ist Luigi Lucioni (1900- ). For further information on this artist,see The Etchings of Luigi Lucioni, -A Catalogue Raisonne', by Stuart P.Embury (Washington, 1984). Lucioni also painted Sultner's portrait in1952 and the "People" section of the transparencies contains a number of images of Lucioni at work. Another significant category is the Japanese prints, including two by a major nineteenth-century artist, Ando Hiro-shige (1797-1858).
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into eleven series.
Series 1: Personal Papers, 1923-1981
Series 2: Professional Papers, 1954-1980
Series 3: Lecture Materials, 1952-1980
Series 4: Biographical Materials, 1954-1980
Series 5: Transparencies, 1947-1980
Series 6: Photoprints, 1913-ca. 1980
Series 7: Photonegatives, 1929-1981
Series 8: Prints, Drawings, Mixed Media, ca. 1790-1979
Series 9: Audio Tapes, 1947-1980
Series 10: Miscellaneous, 1947-1980
Series 11: Steve Eyster Addenda, 1937-1980
Biographical / Historical:
Donald Harvey Sultner was bom in York, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 1914, the son of Lillian May Arnold Sultner and Harvey A. Sultner. In 1923 Sultner attended the Lewis Institute in Detroit, Michigan, to overcome a speech impediment. He entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 and graduated in 1936. Sultner studied merchandising and sang in the glee club, then under the direction of composer Harl MacDonald. Sultner, a baritone, continued his interest in music and studied voice with Reinald Werrenrath and with Florence Benedict and Bruce Benjamin in New York City. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he appeared in concert with accompanists at schools, clubs, and resort hotels along the East Coast.
It appears that photography was always an important part of Sultner's life. Using a small format (120) camera, he recorded his vacation travels around the United States and Canada, parties, and his family. While living in New York, Sultner continued photographing friends and family and began photographing the famous people he encountered on his concert tours. In the early 1950s he began taking 2-1/4-inch by 2-1/4-inch color transparencies (slides) of landscapes and architecture as he traveled giving concerts.
Sultner, who had taken the stage name of "Sultner-Welles," began what was to be his lifework as a professional "photo-lecturer" in 1952. He illustrated his talks on nature, art, architecture, and the environment with his color slides. In 1954 Sultner toured West Germany as a guest of the Bonn government, and in 1959 he lectured in Asia under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. He was dubbed the "camera ambassador." Constantly adding new material to his collection of slides, Sultner traveled extensively throughout the United States, speaking before garden clubs, cultural organi-zations, and schools. He also appeared aboard various ships of the Holland-America line during a number of cruises abroad.
Sultner had established his performance style by the early 1960s. He expanded his lectures to include a combination of art, words, and music. The expanded presentation resulted in the "photo-concert," a unique synthesis of light and sound that Sultner frequently per-formed with a symphony orchestra. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra commissioned "Concertino for Camera and Orchestra" by Eric Knight with Sultner in mind. The world premiere was in Baltimore in March 1979. While he spoke on many art, garden, and architectural topics, Sultner specialized in subjects relating to the baroque and rococo periods and Palladian architecture.
Sultner died of cancer in York, Pennsylvania, on March 25, 1981, at the age of 67.
1914 -- April 13, born York, Pennsylvania.
1929 -- In Detroit at Lewis Institute to overcome a speech impediment.
1932 -- To University of Pennsylvania.
1935 -- Summer trip to Roanoke (VA), Picketts, Hershey (PA); fall trip to New England for fraternity (AXP) convention.
1936 -- Spring glee club trip; graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; summer trips to Newport News (VA), northern trip to Canada, Picketts (PA).
1937 -- Fall trip to Williamsburg (VA), Duke University (NC); Sultner family begins building "Glen Hill" (Dover, PA).
1938 -- Summer at home, and Picketts (PA), Camp Pratt.
1939 -- Spring trip to Washington, D.C.; September trip to The Homestead (WV), Hot Springs (WV), Virginia; Lake Mohonk (NY).
1940 -- Summer trip to New Orleans, Blowing Rock (NC); winter trip to Skytop Club (NY); fall trip to Atlantic City (NJ), Philadelphia (PA), Annapolis (MD).
1941 -- Winter 1941-42 appearance in "Hit the Deck." Lake Mohonk (NY) with Ted Walstrum (Sept. 22-23); Skytop Club (NY) (February); summer trip to Canada, Lake Chazy (NY) (Aug. 17-23).
1942 -- Spring in Atlantic City (NJ); summer to Buck Hill Falls, Lakes Chazy and Mohonk.
1943 -- Summer trip to Mohonk (NY).
1944 -- Summer: To Toronto (Ontario), Muskoka Lake, Bigwin Island, Montreal (Quebec), Mohonk (NY).
1946 -- To Mohonk (NY), Ogunquit (ME), Old Saybrook (CT), Nantucket (RI).
1947 -- Singing tour of Canada and New England; winter-spring tour to Georgia and Florida.
1948 -- To Florida and Nassau, Feb.-Mar., Vermont, July-Aug.; Nassau-Havana-Miami-Bermuda, October.
1949 -- Singing tour of North and South Carolina.
1950 -- Summer trip to South.
1951 -- To District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, [New Jersey?], New York, Vermont.
1952 -- January 9: first public photo-concert, Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, Philadelphia; trips to Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont.
1953 -- To Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont.
1954 -- Guest of German government for a study tour in the fall. To District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia.
1955 -- To Holland; Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia.
1956 -- To California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.
1957 -- Holland-America Cruise to Germany, Austria, Italy. To Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia.
1958 -- Holland-America Cruises to Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy, Switzerland. To Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota., Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin.
1959 -- United States Information Service (USIS)-sponsored tour of Asia: Burma, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaya, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam. Also visited Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Greece, Iran, Italy, Spain; Alaska, California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania.
1960 -- Holland-America Cruise to Austria, Belgium, Caribbean, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Morocco. To Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.
1961 -- To Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland; Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode.Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.
1962 -- Portfolio, "Autumn in Vermont," with introduction by Carl Carmer, published in Autumn issue of Vermont Life. Holland-America Cruise to Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Sweden. To Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia.
1963 -- Holland-America Cruise to Caribbean, Canada, Sweden, Thailand. To Alabama, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, N;w York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.
1964 -- Holland-America Cruise to Germany, Canada, England, Holland, Wales. To Delaware, District of Columbia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia.
1965 -- Holland-America Cruise to Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Wales. To Arkansas, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia.
1966 -- Holland-America Cruise to Caribbean, Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland. To New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.
1967 -- Holland-America Cruise to Caribbean, Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Wales. To Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia.
1968 -- To Germany; Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia.
1969 -- To England, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland; Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia.
1970 -- Holland-America Cruise to Caribbean, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden. To Alabama, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia.
1971 -- Holland-America Cruise to Caribbean, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Sweden. To Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.
1972 -- Holland-America Cruise to Asia, Pacific, Caribbean, Africa, Austria, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Turkey. To California, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia.
1973 -- Holland-America Cruise to Austria, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Sweden. To California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont.
1974 -- To Germany, Switzerland; California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia.
1975 -- To Austria; California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia.
1976 -- To Canada; Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah.
1977 -- To Canada, Germany; New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia.
1978 -- To Scotland; Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina.
1979 -- To England; Florida.
1980 -- To Florida.
1981 -- March 25: Sultner dies of cancer, York, Pennsylania.
Introduction:
The Donald H. Sultner-Welles Collection, ca. 1790-1981, came to the National Museum of American History in 1982 from the estate of Mr. Sultner. The collection was created by Sultner over his adult life and represents one of the most extensive collections of color transparencies created by one individual and held in a public repository. Sultner's emphasis was on world culture. He took the majority of his photographs in the eastern United States, western Europe, and Asia. Gardens, architecture, and people are the three major subject areas represented in the collection. Of additional interest are Sultner's taped impressions of his 1959 United States Information Service (USIS)-sponsored Asian tour. The collection occupies 309 boxes and covers more than 83 cubic feet.
The Donald H. Sultner-Welles Collection is open to researchers in the Archives Center, third floor east, of the National Museum of American History, between 12th and 14th Streets, on Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20560. The Archives Center is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Written and telephone (202/357-3270) inquiries are welcome and researchers are encouraged to contact the Archives Center before their arrival. The FAX number is 202/786-2453.
This is the eleventh in a series of occasional guides to collections in the Archives Center. Finding aids to other collections are available. The Guide to Manuscript Collections in the National Museum of History and Technology (1978) and an updated compilation contain brief descriptions of all archival holdings in the Museum. All current Archives Center holdings are available for search on the Smithsonian Institution Bibliographic Information System (SIBIS), an online database.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but a portion of the collection is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
A small number of letters and photographs are restricted until the year 2031. Identification list in box.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Community Life Search this
Extent:
5 Cubic feet (22 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs
Manuscripts
Audiotapes
Scrapbooks
Slides (photographs)
Place:
Carmel (Calif.)
Panama Canal (Panama)
California
Date:
1896-1981.
Summary:
Collection documents Sims's activities as a traveler and his interest in historic restoration. It includes forty-one notebooks, 6,000 color slides, a smaller number of photographic prints, forty-one stereo view cards, and three boxes of personal papers and ephemera. While some images are personal, the majority form a documentary record of various subjects and places and provide biographical information on Sims.
Scope and Contents:
These papers document Sims's activities as a traveler and his interest in historic restoration. They consist of forty-one notebooks, Series 1-4; and three boxes, Series 5-9, of personal papers and ephemera. Series 5-7 are particularly valuable for biographical information. Series 10 includes 6,000 color slides, a smaller number of photographic prints, and forty-one stereo view cards. The total volume of the collection is approximately eleven linear feet.
The notebooks cover the years 1896, 1908-1913, 1918, and 1934-1976. The notebooks are written in a documentary styles that is enhanced by literary touches and perceptive details. The subjects include visits to several national parks, the Boronda adobe, and travel on most continents.
The 6,000 35mm slides that Sims took between 1944 and 1976 portray the use of the automobile in travel, national and international touring, and family travel. They are organized by either trip or location. They document his collecting, research, and restoration interests, and complement his written and artistic work. In technique, Sims's photographs are at least a cut above amateur photography. The slides remain in the order in which the Archives Center received them. In some cases they are organized, captioned, and numbered as a slide program. In other cases, while they are captioned they are not part of a specific slide program that Sims organized. Usually the identification in the Detailed Container List represents Sims' s own captions, which have been copied from the slide sleeves.
While some images are personal, the majority form a documentary record of various subjects and places. All the slides are dated and labeled or captioned, either on box inserts or on the slides themselves. The slides are generally organized by trip. Of particular interest is the documentation of Sims's restoration of the Boronda adobe. These slides are well captioned and show the step by step process.
The slides include many early Kodachromes from the 1940s in excellent condition. These represent the few examples of this type in the Museum. Although these slides are not extraordinarily rare, they are a very early example of the color process.
There are also black and white prints and a few color prints. Some of these document an automobile trip along the California coast in the 1930s. All the black-and-white prints portray the photographer for Sims's concern to document his travels adequately and in a meaningful way.
The three document boxes of supplemental material includes articles, correspondence (for example, a letter to Sims from the Henry Ford Museum thanking him for donating an oral history of a motoring trip he had taken), business cards, certificates of achievement, hotel ephemera, news clippings (Series 12), published travel accounts, printed travel brochures, and audio tapes (Series 11), in which Sims recounts many of his trips over the years. This material is valuable because it provides biographical information on Sims. It also may be useful for exhibits and research. Much of the material—the hotel ephemera and the printed travel brochures and accounts—is similar to ephemera in the Warshaw Collection.
Sims's photographs are similar in content to two other collections in the Archives Center. The Clyde W. Stauffer Family Photographic Album portrays family automobile trips across the United States between 1935 and 1940. The Donald Sultner Welles Collection of travel slides documents locations throughout the United States and around the world.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into 12 series.
Series 1:Notebooks, 1896-1975
Series 2: Political Notes, 1964-1976
Series 3: Comments on Vietnam, 1954-1975
Series 4: Moon Landings, 1969-1976
Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1896-1981, undated
Series 6: Correspondence, 1920-1987
Series 7: Biography, 1911-1938
Series 8: Published Material, 1927-1966
Series 9: Artifacts, 1913-1937
Series 10: Photographs, circa 1936-1962
Series 11: Audio Materials
Series 12: Newsclippings, undated
Historical:
Boronda Adobe
In 1946 George W. Sims purchased the old Boronda adobe in the Carmel Valley of California, and over the next ten years he restored it.
The Boronda adobe was built above the Carmel River in 1832 by José Manuel Boronda on his 7,000 acre Rancho de Los Laureles land grant. José was the son of Don Manuel Boronda, the first schoolteacher in California. José was married to Juana Cota of Santa Barbara. The sixty-four foot long house has adobe walls twenty-seven inches thick and hand-hewn redwood beams. Senor and Senora Boronda lived there with their fifteen children. It was in this house that Senora Boronda reputedly made a new cheese much liked by her neighbors and today known as Monterey Jack cheese. She eventually produced enough to sell to the surrounding community.
The Boronda family sold the ranch and adobe to Nathan W. Spaulding in the late 1860s or early 1870s. He was a mayor of Oakland, California. The next owner was the Pacific Improvement Company in the early 1880s, the forerunner of Del Monte Properties Company. A small cheese factory was built to commercialize the product under the name "Monterey Jack." Nevertheless, the adobe eventually became abandoned as a house. Before Sims purchased it the adobe was used as a shelter for dairy cows.
Sims plastered the outside walls to protect the soft adobe bricks and whitewashed the interior walls. The original dirt floor was covered with a floor of two-inch clear, heart redwood, random planks. It slopes downhill as does the roof of the house. The entire house follows the topography of the site. Sims left several cables stretching across the crudely raftered ceiling to support the walls.
Sims reroofed the house with one hundred year old roof tiles from the old Vasquez adobe in Monterey, California. He also constructed a workshop on the cement foundation of the old cheese factory and milk barn, added a carport, and built a fence protected patio of the Mexican type, adjacent to a Spanish garden with gravel paths. The patio walls were made of adobe created from Carmel Valley soil.
The first floor of the adobe consists of a long living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bath. An inside staircase was added and leads to the second floor living room, two bedrooms, and a bath. All of the rooms on the main floor are on a different level. The kitchen at one end of the house is thought to date to the 1790s when the land belonged to the Carmel Mission.
Biographical / Historical:
George W. Sims (1896-1986) was a tax lawyer, certified public accountant, world traveler, and collector of pre-Columbian objects. He spent his childhood in Fairfax County, Virginia. At age seventeen he began the study of law at the Washington College of Law (now American University), and worked at night as a telephone company traffic manager. He was employed as a clerk in the Panama Canal Zone by the Panama Railroad Company, Commissary Branch, from 1915-1916. Sims left Washington, DC, because he needed money for school and received a better salary in Latin America. "The pay was 25% higher there [Panama] than in the U.S.A., because the risks of Yellow Fever were great, and work and living conditions less satisfactory than at home." (Box 8, folder 6) This was the first of his many trips to other countries. He then returned to Washington and graduated from law school.
Between 1918-1919 he served as sergeant first class in the aviation section of the Signal Corps. He was stationed for a time at the Vichy (France) Hospital Center, a part of the United States Base Army Hospital, No. 115. After the war Sims did graduate work in accounting at Benjamin Franklin University in the District of Columbia, studying at night. During the day he worked in the Navy Department's communications section.
In 1919 Sims and a few friends traveled west on one of the early automobile trips across the United States. In July he visited Fresno, California. He returned that same year to Washington, DC, and "made plans for making the West (and Fresno) his permanent home." In January, 1924, Sims returned with his wife to fulfill those plans and thus began his long time love affair with the West and California." (Scrapbooks: Vol. 38, Box 8, folder 2)
After his first wife Katherine died in 1946, Sims spent much time on world cruises. His destinations included North, South, and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Between 1946 and 1956 he also purchased and restored the 1832 Boronda adobe in Carmel, California.
Sims married Emma Marenchin Sims on her birthday November 2, 1971 in Santa Barbara, California. Prior to her marriage Mrs. Sims (1914-? ) worked in the public health field after graduating from Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She remarked, "My world opened up when I married George." Sims died in 1986.
Provenance:
Collection donated by George W. Sims, January 10, 1985.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
This collection documents, through lantern slides, slides, prints and negatives, life in Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and other locations in the Middle East. The majority of the photographs were created and assembled by Stephen Haboush, although some were purchased. Haboush routinely traveled to his birthplace of Israel and he photographed his travels. He then used the photographs for lectures about his life as a shepherd and experiences in the Holy Land.
Scope and Contents:
This collection documents, through lantern slides, slides, prints and negatives, life in Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and other locations in the Middle East. The majority of the photographs were created and assembled by Stephen Haboush, although some were purchased. Haboush routinely traveled to his birthplace of Israel and he photographed his travels. He then used the photographs for lectures about his life as a shepherd and experiences in the Holy Land.
There is a specific emphasis on the activity of shepherding, but there are photographs depicting generally landscapes, flora, the Wailing Wall, pottery, sunsets, buildings, altars, churches, mosques, rock formations, boats on the river, camels, market scenes, donkeys, villages, tilework, streetscapes, maps of Egypt and Palestine, and individuals--shepherds, British soldiers, and women at a well.
The collections consists primarily of lantern slides which are loosely organized. Lantern slides are positive images on glass and the exterior glass. Lantern slides were intended to be projected for viewing and were a popular entertainment medium in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Small groupings of slides and photographs were identified, but there is little arrangement and identification of the materials. Some of the materials are identified and numbered, and when this was possible, these materials were grouped together. Many of the numbered groups of slides have great gaps. Some of the miscellaneous slides have been grouped and briefly identified, for example, "British Soldiers."
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into three series.
Series 1, Lantern Slides, undated
Series 2, Negatives and Transparencies and Prints, undated
Series 3, Slides, undated
Biographical / Historical:
Stephen Haboush was born on June 28, 1892 in Galilee, Israel. Haboush emigrated to the United States circa 1914 and became an American citizen in 1923. During the 1920s, Haboush joined the Chautauqua Lyceum Lecture circuit. The Chautauqua idea comes from the original Chautauqua Institution, which was founded in 1874 on Lake Chautauqua in western New York. The original idea was to offer one-to-two week summer retreats for adults to continue their education by attending lectures and performances. The lyceum version of Chautauqua was also offered to adults, but the lectures and performances were held during the fall, winter and spring, and took place in schools, church halls, or opera houses not located at Lake Chautauqua, but around the United States. Haboush died in March 1975.
Haboush lectured widely, sometimes with his wife, presenting slide lectures and musical travelogues about the Holy Land, and his experiences as a shepherd. Haboush photographed his travels throughout the Middle East, especially Jerusalem. He wrote two books, Over the Hills of Galilee (1924) and My Shepherd Life in Galilee: With an Exegesis of the Shepherd Psalm (1949). The latter was Haboush's interpretation of the 23rd Psalm.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Roger M. Lepley on January 1, 2009.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The collection documents Louis S. Nixdorff's participation in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. He was a member of the University lacrosse team that represented the United States.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains an oversize scrapbook of newspaper clippings, loose clippings from a Baltimore newspaper Sunday supplements, a diary recorded by Nixdorff, and an album of photographs that Nixdorff took on the Amsterdam visit and several other trips.
The newspaper clippings in an oversize scrapbook follow the fortunes of the Johns Hopkins University lacrosse team, national champions for 1926 and 1927, through its 1928 season, a post-season series, the playoffs to represent the United States at the Olympic Games in the summer of 1928, and the Olympic lacrosse games in Amsterdam. Newspaper clippings years later reminisce about the 1928 lacrosse team at the Olympic games in Amsterdam.
The newspaper clippings recounting various games are seldom identified and most of the articles are not dated. Some are from the Baltimore Post, later taken over by the News and were written by Yale Merrill. Others are from the Sunpapers, morning and evening. Some carry an Associated Press identification. Many of the accounts of the 1928 intercollegiate season prior to the Olympic Games were written by W. Wilson Wingate. Some of the news clippings are incomplete.
The trip of the 268 Olympic athletes to Amsterdam on the S.S. President Roosevelt is described graphically by Louis S. Nixdorff in his diary. The diary transcript included later in this Register has been transcribed exactly as written by the author, regardless of omissions of obvious words or occasional misspellings. The diary entries relating to the voyage clearly depict the boredom of the long voyage for young athletes eager to get to Amsterdam and compete in the Olympics. Training was continued during the trip insofar as it was possible on shipboard. Training and meals represented welcome relief from the monotony of the journey.
The diary is written in a clear hand in a soft-cover, lined notebook. Nixdorff presumably purchased it specifically to put his thoughts and observations down on this exciting and, to him, historic trip. The diary covers the period from the departure of the lacrosse team from the Baltimore and Ohio railroad station in Baltimore for New York on July 10, 1928, to the departure from Cherbourg for home on August 15, 1928. It includes Mr. Nixdorff's accounts of shipboard life, the game against the Canadians that the Americans won and their loss to the English team on the following day. England's subsequent loss to Canada meant that each team had a win and a loss. No team was declared a victor. The diary also covers a one-week stay in Paris, including a trip to the nearby World War I battlefields.
The collection contains snapshots that Nixdorff took on the S.S. President Roosevelt en route to Amsterdam, and images of Olympic events and of sightseeing in and around Amsterdam and Paris. These photographs mounted in an album portray an individual's effort to document his travels in a meaningful way.
Other material in the collection includes copies of three reminiscent articles published in the Baltimore Sun magazine section on April 5, 1951, June 26, 1955, and April 23, 1978; photogravure pictures of a Hopkins University of Virginia game and a Hopkins-University of Maryland game without attribution or date; Mr. Nixdorff's visa for France; Gen. Douglas MacArthur's report on the ninth Olympiad to the president of the United States; the official program for August 5, 1928; the passenger list for the S.S. President Roosevelt's return to New York; a cloth Olympic blazer patch; and two cloth lacrosse numbers.
This collection represents a contribution to both sports history and the history of the Olympics. The collection complements several Archives Center photographic collections, emphasizing international travel and touring by an American between the two World Wars.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into five series.
Series 1: Correspondence, 1926-1987
Series 2: Diary, 1928
Series 3: Photographs, 1928
Series 4: Newspaper clippings/Scrapbook, 1928, 1951, 1955, 1978
Series 5: Programs, Awards, Invitations, 1928
Biographical / Historical:
Louis S. Nixdorff (October 1, 1906-January 23, 1992), a native Baltimorean, spent his life there. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in 1924 and from the Johns Hopkins University in 1928 with a degree in business administration. While attending Johns Hopkins he was a member of the University lacrosse team that represented the United States at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. He later became a real estate executive and president of Properties Incorporated in Baltimore. Mr. Nixdorff continued to make real estate appraisals and to manage properties after retirement. He belonged to the Johns Hopkins Club, the Baltimore City Real Estate Brokers Round Table and the Maryland Historical Society. He also was an enthusiastic golfer.
The tremendous interest and excitement generated by lacrosse in Baltimore in 1928 is clear from the press coverage of intercollegiate lacrosse for that year. Stories on important games began at least a day before the event, continued during the day of the game in morning and evening papers and lasted for at least a day afterward.
The process that culminated in the selection of the Johns Hopkins University team to represent the United States in the Olympic games in Amsterdam was a formal one. The lacrosse ladder selected by the Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association to place before the Olympic Committee included ten teams. Of these, six were chosen by the Olympic Lacrosse Committee for national playoffs: the Mount Washington Club, Army, Navy, the University of Maryland, Rutgers and the Johns Hopkins University. In the playoffs the University of Maryland defeated Rutgers 7-2 and Navy 6-2. Hopkins defeated Mt. Washington 6-4 and Army 4-2. In ever-mounting excitement, Hopkins on June 23, 1928, overwhelmed Maryland 6-3. The executive committee of the American Olympics Commission formally ratified this selection of the Johns Hopkins University lacrosse team to represent the United States at the 1928 Olympics. Four members of that team are in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame: C. Gardner Mallonee, John Lang, Tom Biddison, and Bill Logan.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History
George W. Sims Collection (AC0127)
Clyde W. Stauffer Photographic Album (AC0139)
Donald Sultner-Welles Collection (AC0145)
Separated Materials:
An Olympic blazer patch and two lacrosse numbers are in the Division of Community Life (now Division of Cultural and Community Life).
Provenance:
The collection was donated to the Archives Center by Mrs. Anne Byrd Nixdorff, January 1992.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Work and Industry Search this
Extent:
1 Cubic foot (1 box)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Stereographs
Date:
1867-1927
Summary:
The collection contains stereographs by various makers. Most depict trains, railroads and railroad related subjects such as railyards, railroad bridges, elevated trains.
Content Description:
The collection contains stereographs by various makers. Most depict trains, railroads and railroad related subjects such as railyards, railroad bridges, elevated trains. Also included are many maritime subjects, including steamships, riverboats, harbors and shipyards. A few of the cards depict scenes in American cities such as New York and Chicago. The vast majority of the images are of scenes in the Northeastern United States, though there are several from Colorado, and a few foreign subjects.
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Musical History Search this
Extent:
12 Cubic feet (28 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Sheet music
Sound recordings
Photographs
Ephemera
Correspondence
Place:
New York (N.Y.)
Date:
1883-1980
Summary:
The bulk of the collection is music for the five-string banjo, often with piano and/or second banjo accompaniments. Almost no sheets have cover illustrations. Many editions are British and rarely have copyright dates.
Scope and Contents note:
The collection documents banjoist Paul Cadwell (1889 1985). Most of the material originally belonged to him; exceptions to this include photographs of Frances Reed (Cadwell's first wife), travel ephemera of Frances Reed, banjo music of William Brewer, and banjo history writings of Brewer. British banjoist William Brewer corresponded regularly with Cadwell through the 1950s. Though they never met, a close friendship developed between the men. After Brewer's death, Brewer's son mailed his father's banjo materials to Cadwell (see correspondence from Basil Brewer). Series 8, "Reed Travel Ephemera," is largely unrelated to both Cadwell and the banjo most items date from before Reed's marriage to Cadwell. This series is unprocessed as of this writing. Most of Cadwell's audio recordings (both discs and tapes) fell outside the museum's collections scope and so were not kept. A complete inventory, however, has been attached at the end of this register.
The bulk of the collection consists of music for the five string banjo, often with piano and/or second banjo accompaniments. The Cadwell and the Brewer banjo music have been placed in separate subseries. The Cadwell music is organized alphabetically by title of composition; much of this material is fragile and a majority of the music is in manuscript rather than published scores. The Brewer subseries maintains his careful organization: alphabetical by composer or arranger separating the American from the British composers/ arrangers. Almost no sheets have cover illustrations. Many of the editions are British (which rarely give a copywrite date).
Bluegrass and folk banjo music from the second half of the 20th century, when written, was written in tablature. "Classic" five-string banjo music is written in standard notation with some adaptations. The Brooks and Denton compositions were given in both standard notation and tablature and an arrangement of "Dueling Banjos" is in tablature. All other banjo compositions are written in standard notation. Some compositions are in C notation, others were transposed to A. Earlier in the 19th century, the banjo sounded in A and the music was written in A. With the technological changes in banjo construction of the late 19th century, the pitch of the banjo went up and generally sounded in C. The British were quick to switch to C notation, but American banjoists, wedded to tradition, were slow to make the change.
Cadwell had music in both C and A notation; presumably, he could play both. Adaptations to standard notation include the following indications for which finger should pluck the string: + = thumb, = first finger, = second finger. "12 B " indicates that the marked section should be played using a barre at the 12th fret. A sixteenth note flag up high G (high E in A notation) is used when the note should be played on the short thumb string.
Most of the music is for standard five-string banjo. There is a small amount of music for four-string tenor or plectrum banjo (as well as a few selections for mandolin and guitar). Two forms of the five string banjo appear in the music collection: the banjeurine and the zither banjo. The banjeurine was popular in banjo clubs, slightly smaller, tuned higher, and usually played lead. The zither banjo is peculiar to Britain. The two highest strings are of metal and the lower strings of the "classic" standard gut, nylon, or wound silk. The banjo has a resonator, but unlike American banjos with resonators, the head sits flush with the resonator. Many of the British compositions are labeled for zither banjo and are intended to take advantage of the peculiarities of that instrument's sound.
Arrangement:
The collection has been organized into the following series:
Series 1: Correspondence, 1941-1976
Series 2: Photographs, circa 1895-1980
Series 3: Ephemera, 1922-1978
Series 4: Banjo Music, circa 1883-1975
Series 5: Magazines and Journals, 1886-1977
Series 6; Banjo History Sources, circa 1951-1975
Series 7: Audio Recordings, circa 1895-1976
Series 8: Reed Travel Ephemera, circa 1930-1970
The Cadwell music is organized alphabetically by title of composition; much is fragile and in manuscript rather than published scores. The Brewer subseries maintains his careful organization: alphabetical by composer or arranger, separating American from British composers/arrangers.
Biographical/Historical note:
Paul Cadwell was born in 1889 in Westfield, New Jersey. He lived nearly all of his life in New Jersey and New York City. He began playing banjo at the age of ten. His first teacher was Fred Van Eps, a young man who already had been making commercial recordings of banjo ragtime and popular tunes. Van Eps continued to record frequently through the 1920s.
From the 1880s to the 1910s most American Universities and all of the Ivy League schools had banjo clubs. These organizations played orchestra style with various sizes of banjos. Cadwell played with college banjo clubs at both Princeton (class of 1910) and Harvard Law School. After law school, Cadwell studied for a time in England at Trinity College, Oxford. He spent his adult life working as a lawyer and in various business dealings.
After his schooling, Cadwell continued to perform on the five string banjo. In the 1920s he organized and performed in minstrel shows for the American Legion and the Masonic Lodge. During the 1930s he played occasionally on the "Dutch Masters" radio hour as a member of the "Van Eps Trio." Cadwell began his involvement with American folk music in the 1940s playing for the American Folk Dance Society and on NBC radio for "Music of the New World." During the 1950s, Cadwell became involved in the folk music revival and he befriended revivalist and bluegrass musicians, notably Roger Sprung.
In 1949, a group of older "finger style" five string banjoists created a formal organization; the American Banjo Fraternity (ABF) still meets twice a year in Lewistown, Pennsylvania though the original banjo notables are now deceased. Paul Cadwell, Fred Van Eps, Alfred Farland, Harry Denton, Bill Bowen, and Frank Bradbury (names familiar to fans of this style of banjo playing) were all members. Cadwell was a bit younger than the others and also had never made his living playing vaudeville or making commercial recordings as had these other men. The heyday of their music surely had passed, but they banded together to keep the tradition.
Cadwell sensed in the folk revival of the 1950s a revitalization of the five string banjo. Most of the other ABF members saw these young banjo players as a threat to their music; they played with metal stringed instruments and with what seemed to them a simplistic technique. The correspondence in series 1 traces the painful conflict between Cadwell and the ABF members over the folk music revival. Cadwell continued to perform in folk revival events into the 1970s.
Cadwell married Frances Reed in 1956 (they had been a couple, though, for many years). Many of the photographs in series 2 and most of the travel ephemera of series 8 were hers. In 1965 he married Joyce. Paul Cadwell died in 1985.
Related Materials:
The Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) holds related musical instrument parts (banjo head, banjo strings, and banjo bridges).
Provenance:
Collection donated by Joyce Cadwell, 1991.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The Captain A.H. McComb, Jr. Collection includes approximately 230 35mm slides of public and private gardens and landscapes dating from 1956 to 1966, photographed by Captain A.H. McComb, Jr. at sites in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New York, United States Virgin Islands, Argentina, Bermuda, Capri, Cuba, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Tobago.
Scope and Contents note:
The Captain A.H. McComb, Jr. Collection includes approximately 230 35mm slides of public and private gardens and landscapes dating from 1956 to 1966, photographed by Captain A.H. McComb, Jr. at sites in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New York, United States Virgin Islands, Argentina, Bermuda, Capri, Cuba, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Tobago. While McComb generally indicated the location and/or plant featured in each image on the corresponding slide mount, the location of sites documented in some of images is unknown. Also included are images of various flowers and plants, some of which are not attributable to a particular site. A typewritten list of image captions keyed to the numbered slides accompanied the donation.
Arrangement note:
Arranged into 2 series:
1. U.S. Gardens
2. Foreign Gardens
The original arrangement, which is maintained, consists of a two-part numbering system based on sequential (and chronological) rolls of film and the slides within each roll. Each roll was numbered sequentially by, presumably, Capt. McComb as were the slides within each roll (e.g. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and 7-1, 7-2, 7-3, etc.) with gaps in the numbering sequences representing slides not included in the donation to the Smithsonian.
Biographical/Historical note:
Captain Archibald H. "Bud" McComb, Jr. of Winchester, Virginia, (May 27, 1913-February 8, 2003), was the Chief of International Maritime Safety Coordinating Staff at the United States Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C and life member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.
Provenance:
Captain and Mrs. A.H. McComb donated the collection to the Office of Horticulture in (later Smithsonian Gardens) in 1981.
Restrictions:
Access to original archival materials by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Rights:
Archives of American Gardens encourages the use of its archival materials for non-commercial, educational and personal use under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. Use or copyright restrictions may exist. It is incumbent upon the researcher to ascertain copyright status and assume responsibility for usage. All requests for duplication and use must be submitted in writing and approved by Archives of American Gardens. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
The Marlboro Oral History and Documentation Project is the result of a two-year effort supported in part by a gift from Philip Morris, Inc. Sixty oral history interviews and a variety of television commercials, print advertising, promotional materials, packaging, and industry publications were gathered to document Marlboro cigarette advertising. The bulk of the collection focuses on the period between 1954 and 1986, and examines the "Marlboro man", "Settle Back" and "Marlboro Country" campaigns. The collection is a rich source of information for researchers interested in advertising and marketing history, issues of smoking and health, and the export of both tobacco and American cultural symbols abroad.
The core of the collection is a series of interviews conducted during 1985-1987 by Dr. Scott Ellsworth, an independent scholar and oral historian. The broad range of interviewees included executives of Philip Morris, advertising agency personnel from Leo Burnett, photographers, production staff, sales and marketing personnel, and Marlboro cowboys.
Twenty-seven interviews were conducted overseas, in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and West Germany. Conducted primarily with Marlboro licensee and affiliate staff, the interviews focus on the marketing and advertising history of Marlboro in the six nations. These interviews and others conducted with executives of Philip Morris International in New York City also address the history of Marlboro advertising in Africa, the Middle East, China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere in Europe and Latin America.
The interviews cover events from the 1930s through the 1980s. They focus on the theory and development of Marlboro advertising, its content and creation, and its modifications over the years. The foreign interviews also discuss the structure of the local cigarette marketplace, marketing and advertising techniques, and the use and modification of Marlboro advertising for different cultures.
Finding aids to the oral histories include abstracts of each interview indicating the major topic discussed, a cumulative index to personal names and topics in the interviews, and brief biographical and scope notes.
Arrangement:
Dthe collection is divided into seven series.
Series 1: Research Files, 1943-1987
Series 2, Interviewee Files, 1986
Series 3; Oral History Interviews, 1986
Series 4: Advertising Materials, 1926-1986
Series 5: Promotional items and packaging, 1926-1986
Series 6: Publications and Research Material, 1960-1988
Series 7: Travel Slides Generated by Project Team, 1926-1986
Biographical / Historical:
The history of Marlboro cigarettes offers insight into one of the great advertising and marketing success stories of the 20th century. Marlboro cigarettes were marketed from the Victorian era through the first half of this century as a women's cigarette, with tag-lines that aimed to appeal to female smokers, such as "Marlboro - Mild As May." In 1955, two transformations occurred which would affect both profitability and brand recognition: the addition of an integrated filter and the re-invention of the market through the debut of the "Marlboro Man" advertising campaign. The original Marlboro Man campaign featured close-up images of all kinds of men using the product -- the cowboy was one, along with lifeguards, sailors, drill sergeants, construction workers, gamblers and other types suggestive of a masculine spirit and rugged independence. By 1963, the "Marlboro Country" campaign began. This campaign focused on the cowboy and his symbolic canon: boots, hats, horses, and western landscapes. By the mid-1980s, Marlboro was the best-selling brand in the United States and the world, and the Marlboro cowboy was among the most widely recognized of American cultural symbols. Sold in over 180 nations, both the cigarettes and the ad campaign had become a global phenomena.
Provenance:
The collection was donated to the Archives Center by Philip Morris, Inc. in 1986.
Restrictions:
The materials in the Marlboro Collection are made available for research according to the established practices and principles of the Archives Center and the National Museum of American History.
Rights:
In making these materials available for research, the Smithsonian Institution makes no claims of ownership of the copyrights or related rights. All responsibility for infringement of legal authorship rights and or copyright is assumed by the user of the materials. In addition, the user indemnifies and holds harmless the Smithsonian Institution for all claims, actions, damages, judgments and expenses that may result from use of these materials.
In addition, the donor has imposed restrictions on reproduction or broadcast of collection materials by third parties. The reproduction or broadcast of print ads and television commercials in the collection is subject to prior written consent from: Nancy Lund, Vice President, Marketing,Philip Morris International, 120 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017;(917) 663-5000
Papers relating to the travel writer, photographer and lecturer Burton Holmes, and to De La Varre's own activities as a travel photographer. Includes letters, photographs, printed material, and a set of travel books written by Holmes.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into five series.
Series 1: Letters
Series 2: Photographs
Series 3: Papers relating to appearances of Burton Holmes and Andre La Varre
Series 4: Printed Materials
Series 5: Books
Related Materials:
Materials at Other Organizations
The Travel Film Archive
Andre De La Varre
Born in Washington D.C. in 1902, Andre de la Varre quit school at age 17, bought a motion picture camera, and went to Europe to find adventure. He began making his own travel films and in 1924 became a cameraman for Burton Holmes. In the early 1930's, de la Varre went out on his own as "The Screen Traveler" and made theatrical shorts for independent release as well as for many of the major Hollywood Studios. He traveled and filmed constantly. In an autobiographical sketch, he wrote: "During the winter of 1938-39 I drove more than 10,000 miles through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I covered not only cities and coastal regions but criss-crossed back and forth over the Atlas, Djurdjura, Kebelie, and Aures mountains. I also visited many of the oases on the Northern Sahara and crossed over trails or no trails in the deserts and mountains." De la Varre continued traveling and making films for the next forty years and died in Vienna, Austria at the age of 87.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Mrs. Gretl de la Varre, June 30, 2001.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research and access on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Includes 7 VHS videotapes and 1 audio tape produced by Florice Whyte Kovan, containing interviews and recollections by some band members. Studio portraits and snapshot photographs in 3 scrapbooks, which also contain display advertisements and newspaper clippings from about the band, 1940s. Snapshots include documentation of the band's travels and leisure activities while on the road, including swimming, horseback riding, etc. Packaged hotel soap bars collected by Betty Hansen during the bands' touring documents their itinerary, as do picture postcards written by Alice Smaus Jacoby.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into seven series.
Series 1: Unmounted snapshots
Series 2: Scrapbooks
Series 3: Alice Smaus Jacoby's postcards
Series 4: Packaged soap samples
Series 5: Audiovisual Materials
Series 6: Framed Portrait Photoprints
Series 7: Oversized Photoprints
The scrapbook pages are arranged in original order, apparently partly chronological, but series 1 snapshots are in topical order.
Biographical / Historical:
Founded 1942 in Racine, Wis., by Virgil Whyte, his "all-girl" band was composed of young Racine women. Whyte was instructor, manager, and the initial leader on drums; later his sister Alice took over as drummer. After initial success in Racine and elsewhere in Wisconsin, the band began to accept engagements in other parts of the country, eventually touring the U.S. The band's success drew other acts and performers, including Jill Fontaine and the Wilford Mae Trio, Sam Hearn (known as "Schlepperman"), the Woodson Sisters, and Paul La Verre and Bro. They did U.S.O. tours, entertaining servicemen.
The principal donor, a free-lance researcher and writer, is the daughter of Virgil Whyte.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Florice Kovan, 1993.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The papers of painter, printmaker, and photographer Konrad Cramer and his wife, painter and printmaker Florence Ballin Cramer, measure 8.5 linear feet and date from 1897 to 1968. Papers document both artists' personal and professional lives and are especially rich in documentation of the art community of Woodstock, New York, where Florence Ballin first attended art classes in 1906, and where the couple settled in 1911. Records include biographical materials, correspondence, a Christmas card album, diaries, writings, business records, personal financial records, printed materials, photographs, and artwork.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of painter, printmaker, and photographer Konrad Cramer and his wife, painter and printmaker Florence Ballin Cramer, measure 8.5 linear feet and date from 1897 to 1968. Papers document both artists' personal and professional lives and are especially rich in documentation of the art community of Woodstock, New York, from 1906, when Florence first attended art classes there, and where the couple resided until their deaths in the 1960s. Records include biographical materials, correspondence, a Christmas card album, business records, diaries, writings, personal financial records, printed materials, photographs, and artwork.
Correspondence is between the Cramers and other artists, curators, gallery staff, editors, writers, and personal friends and family. Many drafts and carbons of outgoing letters are also present. The Christmas card album brings together original cards made by their artist friends in the 1920s and early 1930s. Diaries are of both artists, mostly from 1949 onward, with notes and excerpts from earlier diaries present. Writings include technical and biographical essays by Konrad Cramer, and autobiographical and historical essays by Florence Ballin Cramer; notebooks and notes relate to art, travel, photography, and other subjects. Personal Business Records include price lists, receipts, and gallery correspondence with dealers and exhibitors; correspondence, accounting records, and writings related to Florence Ballin Cramer's Florence Gallery in New York City (1919-1920); records related to Woodstock arts and civic organizations in which the Cramers were involved; and personal financial records.
Printed Materials include publicity materials related to the Cramers' various endeavors and the activities of Woodstock arts and civic organizations, as well as dozens of books, little magazines, and journals by and about members of the Woodstock artist's colony. Photographs depict the Cramers and their friends, including early Art Students League Classes and the annual Maverick festival in the 1920s. Also found are a small number of photo-collages and experiments with color photography, and a series of early twentieth century photographs in the pictorialist style. Artwork includes early sketchbooks of both artists; loose sketches, drawings, and designs; textile designs by Konrad Cramer; and prints and printing blocks.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged into 8 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1898-1955 (3 folders; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1900-1964 (2.2 linear feet; Boxes 1-3, 9)
Series 3: Christmas Card Album, 1921-1961 (0.8 linear feet; Box 3)
Series 4: Diaries, 1906-1962 (1 linear foot; Box 4)
Series 5: Writings, 1897-1962 (0.7 linear feet; Box 5, OV 11)
Series 6: Personal Business Records, 1918-1962 (0.3 linear feet; Box 5, OV 10)
Series 7: Printed Materials, 1906-1968 (1.5 linear feet; Boxes 6-7, 9, OV 11)
Series 8: Photographs, 1906-1960 (0.5 linear feet; Box 7)
Series 9: Artwork, 1897-1954 (1 linear foot; Boxes 8-9, OV 10-11)
Biographical/Historical note:
Konrad Cramer was born in Wurtzburg, Germany, in 1888, and studied at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts from 1906 to 1908 with Ludwig Schmidt-Reutte and Ernest Schurth. After a year in the German army, he returned to Karlsruhe to set up a studio, making frequent trips to Munich, where he was exposed to the experimental artists of the Blaue Reiter group, including Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc.
Florence Ballin was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1884. She studied at the Woodstock, New York, summer school of the Art Students League beginning in 1906 under Birge Harrison along with fellow students John Carlson, Grace Mott Johnson, and Andrew Dasburg. She served as secretary for the League in 1906, and had a studio on 59th Street in Manhattan, where she held her first exhibition in 1909. In 1911, she traveled to Europe and met Konrad Cramer in Munich and joined him on visits to exhibitions and studios of the vanguard artists. The two married, moved to the United States, and settled permanently in Woodstock, New York.
Konrad Cramer is often credited as being an important link between German and American modernism in art, and his experimentations with abstraction and expressionism during his first years in Woodstock would seem to bear this out. In 1912 and 1913, he painted a series he called "Improvisations" (after Kandinsky) which was shown in a group exhibition at the MacDowell Club in 1913 along with Andrew Dasburg, Oliver Chaffee, and Paul Rohland. Cramer was photographed by Alfred Stieglitz and wrote an essay about the 291 Gallery for Stieglitz's magazine, Camera Work, in 1914.
The Cramers had two daughters, in 1914 and 1917, and Konrad Cramer became an American citizen in 1917. For income, he began designing textiles for department stores using stencils and batiks around 1918. In his painting, he turned from abstract experiments to the traditional subjects of landscape, still life, and figure in a more representational style that blended modern and regional influences. Florence Ballin Cramer opened a gallery on 57th Street in 1919, encouraged by the sculptor Elie Nadelman. The mission of the Florence Gallery, as it was called, was to exhibit and sell the work of living artists. Although it only survived the season, it was the first gallery to show work by Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Alexander Brook, Ernest Fiene, and Stefan Hirsch, and generated important sales for several young artists in her circle.
Konrad Cramer returned to Europe in 1920 on a Rockefeller grant to study educational methods for craftsmen in Germany and France, and on his return he taught at the Woodstock School of Painting and Allied Arts. Cramer also studied lithography with Bolton Brown in Woodstock around this time, and both Cramers took up printmaking and began publishing prints in local arts magazines. The Cramers were deeply immersed in Woodstock life, participating in the annual Maverick festivals, the Woodstock Artists Association, the Historical Society, and other organizations, hosting meetings and serving as officers of many committees and organizations that presented and supported artwork in their community. They enjoyed a rich social life there among fellow artists at frequent parties and festivals, where Konrad provided entertainment with his fiddle and both Cramers memorialized events in countless photographs.
Konrad Cramer exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club in 1924, and taught at the Children's University School (now the Dalton School), where he painted a mural in 1929. The 1930s were busy years in both Cramers' professional lives. Konrad's exhibitions included the Carnegie International (1929 and 1933), and a two-man show at the Dudensing Gallery (1930), where Cramer and Adolph Gottlieb had been selected the most deserving unknown American painters of the year. He was also included in the exhibit Abstract Painting in America at the Whitney Museum (1935). Florence Ballin Cramer exhibited at Marie Harriman Gallery (1931 and 1933), Macy Galleries (1933), the Pennsylvania Academy (1934 and 1936), and the Corcoran (1935 and 1937). Both Konrad and Florence Ballin Cramer were included in a traveling exhibition of Woodstock artists organized by the College Art Association (1931), the first and second Whitney Biennials (1933 and 1935), and the Wanamaker Regional Art Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting (1934).
In 1934, the Cramers traveled to Mexico, where they produced many paintings and drawings. Konrad Cramer joined the Federal Art Project briefly in 1935, administering the regional program in Woodstock with Judson Smith. It was around this time that he began to learn photography. He became a sort of community photographer, taking photographs of friends' artwork and commissioned portraits, as well as informal photographs of friends. Cramer experimented with photographic techniques such as solarization and collage, using prisms, panes of glass, or composite printing. He first exhibited photographs in 1936 at the Albany Institute, and established the Woodstock School of Miniature Photography (the "miniature" referring to the then-new format of 35mm film) in 1937. He also taught courses in photography at Bard College in the 1940s, and his photographs and articles about photography were published in national magazines.
For the remainder of his life, Cramer continued to teach, write, and produce photographs, occasionally returning to painting, drawing, and printmaking, creating gouaches, wax resist drawings, and stencils of landscapes and figures, with an increasing interest in abstract styles and automatic techniques. Three of his early paintings were included in the 1946 Whitney Museum exhibition Pioneers of Modern Art in America, and the same year, he exhibited abstract photographs at the Woodstock Artists Association. In the late 1940s, he built an automatic drawing machine which he called the sympalmagraph, which rendered precise, geometric forms. In the late 1950s, he collaborated on a traveling exhibition and book of abstract photographs with Manuel Komroff and Nathan Resnik called The Third Eye.
Florence Ballin Cramer held her last exhibitions at the Woodstock Town House gallery (1953) and at Long Island University (1957). She died in 1962. Konrad Cramer died the following year. Both were memorialized in an exhibition at the Woodstock Artists Association Gallery in 1968.
Separated Materials note:
The Archives of American Art also holds microfilm of material lent for microfilming (reels 1027, D170, and D171) including photographs, diaries, and sketches. Loaned materials were returned to the lender and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
A portion of the papers in this collection were loaned to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in 1964 by Aileen Cramer and Margot Cramer Taylor, daughters of Florence and Konrad Cramer. While selected diaries, sketches, and photographs were returned to the donors, some, but not all, of the original loan was subsequently donated with additional materials, in 1975.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Painters -- New York (State) -- Woodstock Search this
Printmakers -- New York (State) -- Woodstock Search this
Photographers -- New York (State) -- Woodstock Search this
The Florence Arquin papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Florence Arquin papers, 1923-1985. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art
Approximately 200 lantern slides, of various scenes in America and Canada, many of them published by railroad lines, presumably to arouse tourist interest in travel by rail. New York State and California are especially emphasized. Some images depict the railroads, railroad stations and railroad equipment. One group of images is from the Nabisco factory.
Scope and Contents note:
Approximately 200 glass lantern slides [exactly 214], of various scenes in America and Canada, many of them published by railroad lines, presumably to arouse tourist interest in travel by rail. Especially emphasized are New York State and California. Some slides feature the railroads and railroad equipment. Some of the slides are scenes from a cereal factory, showing the manufacture of shredded wheat.
Some slide makers are unidentified. Captions quoted are from labels on the slides, except that descriptions in brackets are supplied by the cataloguer.
Slide manufacturers include Chas. Beseler Co.,
The two original wooden storage boxes in which the slides were received are included. Slides shown in boxes 1-10 were originally stored in one wooden box, while those in boxes 11-20 were originally in the second wooden box.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged into one series.
Provenance:
Immediate source of acquisition is unknown. Almost certainly transferred from one of the curatorial divisions, because it has an inventory tag (1980), predating the Archives Center's existence, but no other information is known.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research and access on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
Rights:
Probably public domain, copyrights expired. Fees for commercial reproduction.
