Smaller Collections
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Harvard-Boston Aero Meet, 1910.
Early Aviation Photograph Collection, 1909–1911
Airplanes, aviation meets, and famous flyers from the birth of aviation are documented in this collection of small-format prints, postcards, and corresponding negatives. Public interest in aviation took off after Orville and Wilbur Wright built and flew the first fully practical airplane in 1905. By 1910, air shows, exhibitions featuring planes in flight and on the ground, and meets took place in several parts of the country. Candid shots feature biplanes, monoplanes, and gliders on the ground and in flight. Locations include the International Aviation Tournament at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, and the Harvard–Boston Aviation meets of September 1910 and 1911. Featured aviators, often pictured in planes, include Wilbur and Orville Wright, Claude Graham-White, Earle Ovington, and Eugene Ely.
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Railway car, New York, New York, 1940.
Electric Railway Photograph Collection, 1939–1940
The collection documents electric railway cars and lines in twenty-six states and in Washington, D.C. First introduced in the United States in the nineteenth century, electrification was used primarily for streetcars, trolleys, and interurban routes. These lines flourished in the United States between 1900 and 1930 but began to decline rapidly as motorcars and trucks became increasingly popular, fueled by the rapid expansion of paved roads across the nation. By 1940 many electric railway lines were abandoned. Nearly 600 small-format prints illustrate tracks and cars, many of which were already no longer in use at the time they were photographed.
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Teeming Ingots.
Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 1945–1970
Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation was established in 1853 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and by 1902 was the nation’s second largest producer of steel. The company had major steel works at Pittsburgh; Aliquippa, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; and Hennepin, Illinois. In 1974, Jones and Laughlin became a wholly owned subsidiary of the LTV Corporation. The collection, circa 1945 to 1970, includes striking scenes of employees engaged in steel production, close-ups of machinery in operation, and aerial views of plants at several Jones & Laughlin Steel facilities.
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Court Street, showing Old State House,
Boston, Mass., ca. 1855.Nineteenth-Century Boston Photograph Collection, 1855–1895
This collection of albumen prints captures scenes of Boston from the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Scholars will find detailed views of businesses, busy commercial city blocks, Boston Harbor and wharves, hotels and taverns, libraries, halls, churches, government buildings (including the Old State House), and residences. Several photographs depict the aftermath of the 1872 fire. Also included is a group photograph of the National Typographical Union in 1859.
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Pierre Samuel Dupont, 1935.
Portrait Photograph Collection, ca. 1930–1940
As part of its extensive collecting efforts in the 1930s, the Business Historical Society acquired portraits representing more than 650 prominent businessmen and a few businesswomen. Included are portraits (a few bearing autographs) of Andrew Carnegie, Walter Percy Chrysler, Pierre Samuel DuPont, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Mellon, and Thomas Watson. Female portraits include Dorothy H. Hobson, Assistant Treasurer of Pepperell Mills and Julia Montgomery, General Partner, Ferris and Company. Some photographs are reproductions of portrait paintings, prints, or engravings.
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Eight men working on tea production, ca. 1885.
Tea Industry Photograph Collection, ca. 1885
The various stages of tea processing in villages in China and Japan are featured in a series of albumen prints and one photograph album. Tea cultivation was a part of Chinese culture for more than three centuries. Images illustrate the crews rolling and drying leaves, taster’s rooms, workers packing tea into wooden chests, and porters transporting tea chests to shippers. Also of interest are general views of people and landscapes. The images represent fine examples of nineteenth-century commercial photographs in China and Japan, some of which were delicately hand-colored by local artisans.
