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B.S. | Before Skyscrapers
What was already standing before the skyscraper skyline. Period photographs, about 1840–1900. Streets, plazas, and city views first. Named structures only where the plate actually shows them. No claim about why they were built.
printed 1844·Oxford
High Street, Oxford
William Henry Fox Talbot. Calotype. LACMA dates the negative circa 1839 and the print 1844.
Street photograph · Altered
A street photograph, and an early one: Talbot’s calotype of Oxford High Street, printed 1844. Masonry fronts, a dirt road, trees, a soft dome in the distance. Not a drawing. The print date is 1844. The negative date on the museum record is uncertain.
Open plate
1858·Cairo
Street view in Cairo
Francis Frith. Signed and dated on the print: Frith 1858.
Street photograph
A street photograph. Cairo, 1858, signed Frith: a lane, a striped dome, a minaret, pointed arches, mashrabiya. The museum title is “Street View in Cairo.” It does not name the street. No claim here about why the buildings stood, or about what stands there now.
Open plate
1858·Jerusalem
Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives
Francis Frith.
Elevated photograph · Altered
An elevated photograph, not a drawn panorama. Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives in 1858: olive ground in the foreground, the wall, the Dome of the Rock, the packed city, hills behind. A camera on the hill. Present status of the whole view: altered. The named monuments that are actually in the frame still stand.
Open plate
1860·Prague
Old Bridge over the Moldau
Unidentified photographer. The caption names the subject, not the maker.
Elevated photograph · Surviving
An elevated photograph of the stone bridge: arches, statue groups, the tower at the far end, the castle and cathedral on the hill. Caption on the plate: “PRAGUE. Old Bridge over the Moldau.” An albumen print. Not a lithograph and not a photochrom.
Open plate
c. 1860·Boston
Washington Street, Boston
James Wallace Black.
Street photograph · Replaced
A street photograph from a slightly elevated point. Washington Street, Boston, about 1860: bookshops, a lithographer’s sign, the Boston Journal’s arched front, a wagon, an arched mount. Masonry and cast-iron commercial blocks. Not a bird’s-eye lithograph of the city.
Open plate
1863·Yokohama
Yokohama from the hill
Felice Beato. Joined panoramic photograph, 1863.
Photographic panorama · Replaced
A photographic panorama, joined: the seams are visible and are part of the plate. Yokohama in 1863 from a hill — tiled roofs, the foreign settlement, ships in the bay, fields beyond. A camera, not a drawn bird’s-eye. Not a single unjoined frame.
Open plate
ca. 1850–1880·Edinburgh
Princes Street and the Scott Monument
Unidentified photographer. A numbered stereograph. The maker is not fixed on the card.
Street photograph · Surviving
A street photograph, printed as a stereograph. Both frames are kept. Princes Street runs toward the Scott Monument: shops, lamps, carriages, the Gothic canopy. Not a lithograph. Not one frame cut out of the pair.
Open plate
1861–1873·San Francisco
Lick House, Montgomery Street front
Carleton E. Watkins. Stereograph. New York Public Library dates the negative between 1861 and 1873.
Street photograph · Burned
A street photograph, as a stereograph. Both frames kept, with the Watkins mount. The Lick House front on Montgomery Street: a masonry hotel block, shop windows, the cobbled crossing. Not an aerial photograph. The fire that removed it is not in the picture.
Open plate
late 1860s·Bombay
Shaik Memon Street, Bombay
Samuel Bourne. LACMA dates the albumen print to the late 1860s.
Street photograph · Altered
A street photograph. Bombay, late 1860s: a crowded commercial street, timber and masonry upper floors, balconies, awnings. The inscription names Shaik Memon Street. Bourne’s albumen print. Not a plan and not a drawing.
Open plate
1868–1870·Peking
Central Street, Chinese City, Peking
Photographer not named on the Wellcome record.
Elevated photograph · Demolished
An elevated photograph from the wall. A brick gate-pier at the left, a broad street, tiled roofs, a railed crossing, a tower far off. Wellcome’s caption calls the crossing Beggars’ Bridge and the street Central Street, between the Chinese and Tatar quarters. A camera, 1868–1870. Not a drawing.
Open plate
1870·Damascus
The street called Straight
Félix Bonfils. The plate is marked “918. Bonfils.”
Street photograph · Altered
A street photograph. The caption names it: Damascus, the street called Straight. A cobbled lane, overhanging timber, stone arches, a marked Bonfils negative. 1870. Not a lithograph of the city.
Open plate
between 1860 and 1870·Paris
Rue de Rivoli and the Hôtel du Louvre
Hippolyte Jouvin. Published between 1860 and 1870. Commons describes the object as a stereograph; this scan is one elevated view, with no second frame on the file.
Elevated photograph · Altered
An elevated photograph looking along Rue de Rivoli: the arched colonnade, mansard roofs, the garden railing opposite, traffic of carriages. Jouvin, between 1860 and 1870. One view on this file. Not a drawn panorama of Paris, and not Marville’s demolition plates.
Open plate
ca. 1870·Calcutta
Town Hall, Calcutta
Samuel Bourne. The catalog title says about 1870. No separate date is printed on this file.
Street photograph · Surviving
A photograph of a civic front. The Town Hall: a columned portico, a balustrade, carriages on the open ground in front. Bourne, about 1870. Masonry, not a steel frame. The building’s completion, 1813, is not the date of the exposure.
Open plate
c. 1875·Shanghai
The Bund, Shanghai
Lai Afong. Catalog date circa 1875. The file name says c. 1870.
Elevated photograph · Replaced
An elevated photograph of a waterfront: sampans, a creek and footbridges, a low line of buildings, a spire in the distance, a tiled roof in the foreground. Catalogued as Lai Afong, the Bund, Shanghai, circa 1875. Not the masonry bank skyline that came later, and not a drawing.
Open plate
ca. 1880·Cologne
Cologne Cathedral, south side, towers scaffolded
Theodor Creifelds. The card back is lettered Photographische Anstalt Th. Creifelds, Domkloster, Cöln.
Street photograph · Surviving
A photograph on a cabinet card. The back names Creifelds’s studio at Domkloster in Cologne. The picture is the cathedral from the south, one tower in scaffolding, the other already with its spire. About 1880. The unfinished tower is what the camera caught. Completion of the towers is a documented date, not a reason supplied here.
Open plate
1886–1892·Berlin
Unter den Linden, from west to east
Friedrich Albert Schwartz.
Street photograph · Altered
A street photograph at sidewalk height. Unter den Linden: wet pavement, a lamp, shop signs (Gebrüder Micheli, no. 13, a Bierhalle), upper floors of masonry. Schwartz, between 1886 and 1892. The catalog title says the view runs from west to east. The picture is the shops, not a distant monument.
Open plate
ca. 1880–1900·Algiers
Algiers from the Casbah
The print is lettered “ND. Phot.” — Neurdein — and numbered 211. No personal name beyond that mark.
Elevated photograph · Altered
An elevated photograph from the Casbah, one frame, mounted on an album page. The print says “panorama”; it is not a joined strip. White roofs, a dome, the harbor, the mole, ships. Neurdein, number 211, about 1880–1900. Not a drawing.
Open plate
1888–1900·Melbourne
Collins Street, Grosvenor Chambers
Uncertain. State Library of Victoria holds the view; a possible attribution to Charles Cheney Simpson is not fixed on the print.
Street photograph · Altered
A street photograph. Collins Street: Grosvenor Chambers lettered on the facade, arcades and a balcony, a horse cab, a cable tram, a domed block further along. After 1888, and within a catalog range that runs to 1900. Not a bird’s-eye of Melbourne.
Open plate
ca. 1885–1895·Rio de Janeiro
Central Rio from Morro do Castelo
Photographer not named. Not attributed here to Marc Ferrez. The record used does not name him.
Elevated photograph · Replaced
An elevated photograph over tiled roofs toward the bay: a church with towers and a dome, masonry blocks, ships, mountains. Taken from Morro do Castelo, about 1885–1895. The photographer is unnamed. Not a lithograph, and not a claim that the hill is still there.
Open plate
ca. 1890–1900·Moscow
Red Square
Photographer not named. A colored photographic print in an album. Not filed as a photochrom.
Street photograph · Altered
A photograph of the square, colored, mounted in an album. St Basil’s, the monument still in the middle of the open ground, the Spasskaya tower and the wall. About 1890–1900. A camera on the square. Not a drawing, and not a photochrom filed in its place.
Open plate