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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
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
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
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
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
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
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. 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