Album of photographs predominantly showing the grounds of the Philadelphia Zoo in Fairmount Park, in West Philadelphia. Contains views of the Victorian-style gatehouse after the designs of Frank Furness; "The Dying Lioness" statue after the design of Wilhelm Wolff casted in 1875 at the entrance courtyard; lions, tigers, a jaguar and a zebra walking, standing, and grazing in their caged areas; an elephant, camel, lama, mountain goat, and caribou in fenced yards; buffalo grazing on a pasture; and Solitude, the country retreat of John Penn built in 1785 on the grounds of the zoo (miscaptioned as "Wm Penn's House, Fairmount Park"). Images include zoo keepers, visitors, gates, fencing, "Admission Today" signage, and partial views of other buildings on the zoo grounds. Also contains portrait photographs of a man and woman, probably Josie and Emil, and sculler "Andrew C. Craig, Undine Boat Club" on the Schuylkill River. Craig view also includes cityscape and trees along the riverbank in the background. The Philadelphia Zoo, the first in the nation, opened in 1874.
Images from the first edition of William Maitland’s History of London that belonged to the London merchant and naturalist Peter Collinson (1694-1768). The book was heavily annotated by Collinson, detailing the changing physical fabric of the city of London and events of daily life.
Collection of 142 stereographic views documenting the Philadelphia, Middle, and Pittsburgh divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad issued by Philadelphia photographer Frederick Gutekunst, ca. 1875.
Collection containing primarily engravings, watercolors, and drawings executed by English-born artist and engraver William Birch and his descendants between the 18th and later 19th century. Several of the graphic materials are by William Birch and represent engraved work he completed in Britain before 1794 and following his immigration to the United States that same year. Birch’s works in the collection take the form of watercolors, drawings, paintings, a sketchbook, and as photographic reproductions.
Capitalism by Gaslight was a 2012 exhibition at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Taking its title from a 19th-century literary genre that exposed the darker side of American life, Capitalism by Gaslight introduces us to many of these shadowy entrepreneurs. At its heart the exhibition attempts to neither romanticize nor condemn, but to present the commerce of extra-legal businesspeople in more nuanced yet concrete ways. Although these transactions occurred most expediently in secluded back alleys and basement hideouts, many conmen benefited from the air of legitimacy given to schemes pulled off in broad daylight. And although entrepreneurs working in gray and black markets were excoriated by prominent businessmen, reformers, and authorities, they often had intimate ties to legitimate commercial networks and enjoyed the fruits of their very critics’ patronage. Possessing an entrepreneurial spirit, many underworld operators closely resembled respected businessmen. Perhaps most surprisingly, these illegal forms of commerce were integral to the success of the larger American economy and continue in varied forms today.
Views of the greater Philadelphia area taken circa 1920s-1930s by Aero Service Corporation, an aerial photography firm established in Philadelphia in 1919.
Scrapbook compiled by Philadelphia socialite Minnie Campbell Wilson (neé Harris) primarily containing ephemera from luncheons, suppers, university class days, and other high society social events. Events attend by Harris include dances and recitals at Wissahickon Inn; receptions, club socials, and a gymnastics exhibition at Princeton University; class days at Harvard, Brown, Princeton, and University of Pennsylvania (1885-1891); a Cricket Ball (1888); Authors Dance for the benefit of the School of Industrial Art and Pennsylvania Museum (1890); U.S.S. New York launching at Cramp's Shipyard (1891); and "supper at the Stratford after seeing [Sarah] Bernhardt given by Charles Lea, Feb. 1891." Ephemera includes programs, invitations, menus, and place, dance, holiday, and tally cards. Majority of the cards are printed, with some designed by hand. Holiday cards often depict religious, sentimental, and genre imagery, including children, animals, flowers, landscapes, and costumed and historical figures.
Scrapbook compiled by Philadelphia socialite Minnie Campbell Wilson (neé Harris) containing primarily place, greeting, holiday and calling cards predominantly issued in the United Kingdom and the Northeast United States. Majority of the cards are printed and or chromolithographs, with a small number illustrated with drawings by hand. Many cards also contain ornate border details, embossing, and adornments, including ribbons, fringe, lace, a wishbone, and overlays.
Eccentrically-arranged scrapbook predominantly containing newspaper clippings, patent medicine almanac advertisements, and comic valentines. Also contains scraps, trade cards, and labels. Clippings, many published in the sensational periodicals “National Police Gazette” and “Days' Doings” primarily depict illustrations of murders and violence, crimes and punishments, human curiosities, animal attacks, human peril, women in distress, evocative theatrical performances, acts of daring, cross dressing and comic scenes in silhouette.
Scrapbook containing primarily engraved periodical illustrations issued between circa 1820 and 1852 from American publications, including "Wellman's Literary Miscellany" and "Sartain's Magazine." Illustrations predominantly depict sentimental, religious, and genre views, many after European paintings, and often including children and animals, predominantly dogs.
Scrapbook possibly compiled by Fanny Keene containing trade cards, sentiment cards, holiday cards, rewards of merit, die cut and embossed scraps, and a temperance pledge card primarily issued in New England. Majority of the contents are chromolithographs and some contain trompe l'oeil, embossed, die cut and overlay designs.
The Library Company's ongoing Portraits of American Women project identifies portraits that appeared in books and periodicals before 1861 and makes them accessible online. In antebellum America, before the development of photomechanical image reproduction, such portraits represented a significant investment of time and money.
Album of 12 photographic views showing the West Philadelphia estate of Philadelphia banker and collector Clarence Howard Clark at 4200 Locust Street. Images depict the front gate to the residence, the residence, green house and garden, and pond with fountain. Also depicts members of Clark's family posed at the residence, on the grounds, in a goat carriage, and in a boat on the pond. Views also include an African American servant posed near an entrance, gardeners at the greenhouse, wooded areas, paths, and lawn chairs.
Album of photographs of aerial and landscape views taken in the park during the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which celebrated the centennial of the United States through an international exhibition of industry, agriculture, and art. Photographs predominately depict views from observation towers at George's Hill and Lemon Hill.
Limited edition, souvenir miniature book containing a photographic frontispiece and describing a Vaux family trip to the Yellowstone National Park in August 1885. Photograph shows a woman and young man, probably Mary Vaux and one of her brothers, standing near a geyser, probably one of the several described in the text.
Album containing amateurly-cut, primarily bust-length silhouettes of men and women. Majority include caricatured or non-descript features. Small number of the prints depict full-length silhouettes, including a man holding an eye glass, a man holding a book near a table, and a man holding a filled basket. Also includes a silhouette of a tall male figure and squat female figure and corresponding pencil sketch. Many silhouettes also include hair adornments and other fashion details.
Photograph album containing predominantly posed portraits of the family, extended family, and friends of prominent Philadelphia Quakers John Jay and Rachel Collins Pearsall Smith.
Incomplete card game containing 68 illustrated cards. Cards depict the bust-length portraits of Thomas Bailey Aldrich; William Cullen Bryant; Robert Burns; Samuel L. Clemens, "Mark Twain"; J. Fenimore Cooper; Ralph Waldo Emerson; James T. Fields; F. Bret Harte; Oliver Wendell Holmes; William Dean Howells; Henry W. Longfellow; James Russell Lowell; Samuel Rogers; Bayard Taylor; Alfred Tennyson; Charles Dudley Warner; Richard Grant White; and John G. Whittier. Some portraits are in profile. Versos of cards contain an allegorical image composed of a stack of books, scrolls and leaves of paper, a laurel wreath, and a quill pen. Includes small number of incomplete sets for J. Fenimore Cooper, Henry W. Longfellow; James Russell Lowell, and Richard Grant White. Lowell set includes a cut-out of the portrait from an original card.
Scrapbook of print specimens and proofs engraved by Philadelphia and London engraver William Humphrys. Contents include postage stamp proofs, book and periodical illustrations, tile pages, portrait prints, advertisements, and cut outs of banknote and certificate vignettes. Majority of graphics depict allegorical imagery or illustrations of genre, religious, sentimental, and literary scenes, some from the plays of Shakespeare. Illustrations include scenes of courtship; female friendship; children with animals; a ghoulish-looking woman with a torch; a European man smoking a hookah; Jesus Christ; Adam & Eve; and imagery from Edmund Spencer's "Faery Queen", John Milton's "Palemon's Story," and John Gay's "Thursday: or The Spell." Allegorical works depict the figures of Columbia, Minerva, Mercury, Neptune, Bounty, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Hope, and Apollo, as well as scenes with the American eagle; caducei for the "Liverpool Apothecaries Company"; citizens fighting a fire; cherubs charting a globe; Native Americans; a family; sailing ships; and symbols of farming, trade, and industry. Vignettes also show a portrait of Benjamin Franklin; Pocahontas saving John Smith; and a female warrior slaying a man of royalty captioned "Sic Semper Tyranus."
Memory album compiled by Lewis containing written narratives, photographs, watercolors, textiles, drawings, prints and ephemera documenting his childhood and his lineage and family businesses and residences from the late 18th century to mid 19th century. Specific narrative topics include the provenance of the "Pictures" included in the album; "Memorabilia"; the "Marriage of our Ancestor, 1786. Johann Andreas Philipp Ludwig (i.e., J. A. P. Lewis) and Anna Maria Klingemann"; 'In Memoriam: Johann Andreas Philipp Ludwig' "; the "Memorials of the old Houses, Stores &c.," including deed, plot, architectural, and decor information pertaining to Lewis family residences at 121, i.e., 311 North Fifth Street (1791-1797), 60, i.e., 128 North Fourth Street (1797-1805), 82, i.e., 132 North Second Street (1814-1818), 124, i.e., 264 South Third Street (1818-1824), 148, i.e., 264 South Second Street (1824-1840) and rear storehouse on Laurel Street, and Sixteenth and Walnut streets (1840-1858), and the stores at Walnut and Front streets (1829-1856).
Menus and ephemera related to Philadelphia restaurants, including announcements and invitations, mid-19th century. The collection was started with menus from the John A. McAllister collection and additional menus have accrued over the years. Most significantly, in 1984, Charles E. Rosenberg donated eleven menus from the anniversary dinners of the Shakespeare Society, dating from 1855 to 1874. The collection is open to new additions.
Collection of photographs attributed to Philadelphia painter and pioneer photographer Richards of 18th-century public, commercial, and residential buildings in Philadelphia.
Folio volume of panoramic views of businesses on the 200-900 blocks of Chestnut Street and corresponding pages of advertisements. Also contains a preface, which details that inclusion in the directory required subscription to or purchase of the volume; the intention to "issue the Panoramic View annually"; and the publisher's endeavor to correct all lettering errors "upon the publication of the second edition." Volume also includes interspersed full-, half- and, one-third-page advertisements for business subscribers tenanting, as well as not located on Chestnut Street. Publisher issued only the 1851 directory.
Collection of over 1,000 silhouettes, including the portrait of African American silhouettist Moses Williams, and hundreds stamped Peale Museum, ca. 1800s-ca. 1830s.
Collection created through a Samuel S. Fels Community Fellowship Grant in 2003 of over 300 book and periodical illustrations from the 16th - to 19th -centuries depicting all aspects of African American history and life.
Images range in date from 1595 (Giralomo Benzoni, Americae Pars Quinta) to 1914 (John Wesley Cromwell, The Negro in American History) and include views from 17th through 19th centuries travel and history texts of the social life and agricultural, industrial, and craft work of African peoples; graphics from the antislavery movements in France, Great Britain, and the United States detailing the brutality of slave life and the violence of slave resistance; and a selection of racist caricatures and cartoons from the 19th century reflecting the growing denigration and dehumanizing of African Americans in the era’s American popular print culture.
Album containing photographs of railroad bridges and stations along the B&O Railroad's Philadelphia Division taken on a trip made by a small group of B&O Railroad employees who surveyed the line, March 1891.
Scrapbook of print specimens and proofs compiled circa 1852-circa 1876 probably by a printer associated with the Philadelphia lithographic firm Stein & Jones. Contains book and periodical plates and illustrations; sheet music covers; proof prints; collecting cards; trade cards (several glossed); bank notes, checks, billheads, and receipts; certificates; advertising calendars; and chromolithographed labels and scraps. Commercial ephemera document primarily Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago businesses and organizations, including banks, printers, and art supply dealers.
Majority of contents include several plates from religious texts published in Philadelphia such as Albert Barnes’s "Scenes and Incidents in the Life of the Apostle Paul” (Philadelphia, 1869); illustrations and plates from children and gift books, and periodicals, including from "Peterson’s Magazine" (plates engraved by Illman Brothers); and several works printed by Stein & Jones and Cincinnati lithographers Klauprech & Menzel and Ehrgott & Fobriger. Also includes portraits of lithographers Rudolph Stein and Alfred Jones and color printed and numbered proof lithographs after plates in McKenney & Hall's "History of the Indian Tribes of North America."
Scrapbook compiled circa 1821- circa 1894 containing tickets, invitations, textile and perfume labels, tokens, and trade cards, primarily issued in Philadelphia. Materials included document University of Pennsylvania medical department courses; Pennsylvania Horticultural Society events, including bazaars; and advertising souvenirs from the Centennial Exhibition (1876). Imagery depicts buildings, genre scenes, and allegorical figures.
A collection of PDF finding aids from the Library Company of Philadelphia.
http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pacscl/search.html?fq=top_repository_facet%3ALibrary%20Company%20of%20Philadelphia
Friendship album compiled 1833-1856 by Philadelphia, middle-class, African American social activist Amy Matilda Cassey (1808-1856). Cassey was a member of the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society, founder of the African American coeducation literary and scientific society the Gilbert Lyceum, and active in the temperance movement. Volume contains entries by men and women, most active in the anti-slavery movement, of original and transcribed poems, prose, and essays, and watercolors and pencil sketches. Topics range from abolitionism and slavery, to love and friendship, to female beauty and refinement, as well as motherhood, mortality, and death. Contributors include Frederick Douglass (1881-1895), William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), James McCune Smith (1813-1865), Lucy Stone (1818-1893), Sarah Forten Purvis (1814-1883), and Margaretta Forten (1815-1887).
Two volume set of albums containing predominately cartes-de-visite photographic portraits of prominent American 19th-century figures in politics, education, and the arts, ca. 1870.
Collection predominantly of negatives depicting informal portraits, residences, and the survey work of members of the related Quaker Webster and Smedley families, 1885-1905.
Montgomery P. Simons (1816-1877), one of the earliest practitioners of photography in Philadelphia, was also a successful photographer of stereographs. The Library’s stereograph holdings contains several of Philadelphia businesses, religious institutions, and public buildings and spaces from the Simons studio circa 1865-circa 1875. A large number of the stereographs show Fairmount Park and Water Works in addition to views of churches, including St. James the Less (East Falls) and Holy Trinity (6th and Spruce streets). Images depicting the Betsy Ross House, Custom House, the Post Office, State House, and Headhouse Market are also found in the stereographs as well as views of banks, the Apprentice Library, and the Wire Suspension Bridge at Fairmount. In addition, the collection includes panoramic views, most from the State House, but also one from the La Pierre House (Broad Street) showing Penn Square.
Bartlett & Smith was a partnership from circa 1867- 1869 between George O. Bartlett and a photographer named Smith. Over 20 stereographs depicting Philadelphia views including commercial buildings along Chestnut Street including the Jayne Building, the Continental Hotel, the United States Custom House, and First National Bank; buildings along Broad Street, including the Union League, LaPierre House, and Broad Street Presbyterian Church; the Chestnut Street Bridge over the Schuylkill River; and the Wissahickon.
Two stereographs from this collection were not digitized, [Chestnut St. west of 6th St. with Jayne Building] [(8)1322.F.23h] and View on the Wissahicken near Philla. [(8)1322.F.8].
George O. Bartlett and William French were in partnership circa 1867-1869. Collection of Bartlett and French stereographs depicting Philadelphia streetscapes, including Chestnut Street; public buildings, including the State House, Post Office, and Custom House; cultural institutions, including the Academy of Natural Sciences and Horticultural Hall on Broad Street; and Fairmount Waterworks. Many views are from the series, Gems of Penn’a scenery, Philadelphia and vicinity.
