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Archive: 2017 (15 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

C. M. Bell Studio Collection: Newly Digitized Portraits

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

“…the great success of Mr. Bell is due to his suavity of manner coupled with high artistic ability, and to the gentlemanly deportment observed by his corps of assistants. The rule is, politeness to everybody.” –Photographic Times and American Photographer, Sept. 1, 1883. From the 1870s until the 1910s, tens of thousands of people in …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Artists Capture the Hell Gate Bridge

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One month ago, a blog post in Picture This featured photos of New York’s Hell Gate Bridge, marking the centennial of its dedication. Today, I turn my attention to prints and drawings of the Hell Gate in our holdings. These drawings and etchings enable us to look at the bridge through an artist’s eyes. American …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Springing Forward into Daylight Saving Time

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Most of the United States will “spring forward” this weekend, as we enter Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. – which will immediately become 3:00 a.m. – Sunday morning. Many of us have never known a time when we didn’t go through the biannual ritual of springing forward an hour in the spring, and falling …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Bridges of New York: Spanning the Hell Gate

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

New York City is a city of landmark bridges. One hundred years ago this month, Hell Gate Bridge joined the New York skyline as the longest steel arch bridge in the world. The engineering feat attracted the attention of news photographers, as high over the treacherous strait known as Hell Gate in the East River, …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Double Take: Detecting a Daredevil

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The latest entry in the Double Take series owes its existence to serendipity. Accidental discovery is alive and well in our online collections, and it’s easy to find one thing when looking for another. While working on a reference question about a building on 9th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. and browsing through older photos …