DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION Accession 37

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Finding Aid forDETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTIONAccession 37.102Finding Aid Published: July 2013Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford20900 Oakwood Boulevard Dearborn, MI 48124-5029 USAresearch.center@thehenryford.org www.thehenryford.org

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102FINDING AID CONTENTS:Overview3Administrative Information4History5Scope and Content Note7Arrangement8Subject Terms8Container ListSeries 1, ionSports & RecreationSpecial EventsEthnic GroupsForeign ViewsSeries 2, Color PrintsSeries 3, Postcards1016556467707273747677Appendix A: Photographers Represented in theDetroit Publishing Company Collection79Appendix B: Color Notations on Verso of Photograph82Appendix C: List of Abbreviations Used inDetroit Publishing Company Notations83Appendix D: Examples of Abbreviations Used inDetroit Publishing Company Notations84Appendix E: Annotated Bibliography85Page 2 of 87

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102OVERVIEWREPOSITORY:Benson Ford Research CenterThe Henry Ford20900 Oakwood BlvdDearborn, MI enryford.orgACCESSION NUMBER:37.102CREATOR:Detroit Publishing CompanyTITLE:Detroit Publishing Company collectionINCLUSIVE DATES:1880-1936QUANTITY:17.2 cubic ft. and 46 oversize boxesLANGUAGE:The materials are in EnglishABSTRACT:The Detroit Publishing Company was one of themajor image publishers in the world for nearly 30years from 1895 to 1924. The company producedprints of landscapes and city scenes across theUnited States and around the world. Incorporatedin 1895 as the Photochrom Company in Detroit,Michigan, it was known until 1905 as the DetroitPhotographic Company, and then the DetroitPublishing Company. The collection consists ofphotographic prints, postcards, and color prints withsubjects dating from the 1880s through the 1910s.Page 3 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATIONACCESS RESTRICTIONS:The collection is open for research.COPYRIGHT:Copyright has been transferred to the Henry Ford bythe donor. Copyright for some items in thecollection may still be held by their respectivecreator(s).ACQUISITION:Acquired in 1937 from the estate of Robert B.LivingstoneALTERNATE FORMS:Digitized material from the collection available aspx?keywords %22Detroit%20Publishing%20Co.%22OTHER FINDING AIDS:Digital exhibits describing the collection:- “Photographer to the World--Detroit xhibits/dpc/default.asp- Pic of the Month, June /01.jun.htmlRELATED MATERIAL:Related material beyond The Henry Ford:- William Henry Jackson collection, The ColoradoHistorical Society. Available iamhenry-jackson.- Detroit Publishing Company PhotographCollection, Prints and Photographs Division,Library of Congress. Available athttp://lcweb2.loc.gov/detroit/PREFERRED CITATION:Item, folder, box, accession 37.102, DetroitPublishing Company collection, Benson FordResearch Center, The Henry FordPROCESSING INFORMATION:Collection processed by Cynthia Read Miller, JaneKetcham, and Rosalie Ehrlich.DESCRIPTION INFORMATION: Finding aid written by Cynthia Read Miller, JaneKetcham, and Rosalie Ehrlich., December 1999,and published in June 2013Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: AContent Standard (DACS) and local guidelines.Page 4 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102HISTORY1The Detroit Publishing Co. became a comprehensive publisher of photographic imagesaround the turn of the century. Started in 1895 in Detroit, Michigan, it was known until1905 by its two subsidiary operations, the Photochrom Co., dealing with the productionof color prints, and the Detroit Photographic Co., responsible for the publishing anddistribution of photographic views made by the company. A timely joining ofentrepreneurial energies helped assure the early success of the company.William A. Livingstone (an engineer and son of wealthy Detroit shipping magnate,newspaper publisher, and financier, William Livingstone, Jr.), joined forces with a localphotographer, Edwin H. Husher, to form the company. Husher and Livingstone obtainedfrom the Photoglob Company of Zurich, Switzerland, the North American rights to anastounding new photolithographic process called Photochrom, to produce, in quantity,color prints that retained their photographic verisimilitude while capturing the vibrantcolors of the popular chromolithographs of the late nineteenth century. Husher evenpersuaded an expert in the process, Albert V. Schuler, and a small crew of draftsmenfrom Switzerland to work for the new company. Since color photography as we know itdid not then exist, holding exclusive rights to this Swiss method gave the company asignificant advantage over its competitors. Besides producing these distinctivePhotochrom color prints, the company also published color postcards, sepia-tonedphotographic prints, and lantern slides, all based on a huge inventory of photographicnegatives.The keystone of the company's success,pioneer American photographer WilliamH. Jackson, joined the venture in late1897, bringing 10,000 of his superbglass-plate negatives to form the core ofthe visual publication material. In hisearly years with the company, Jacksontraveled throughout the United States,Canada, and the Caribbean, taking his ownFigure 1: The Photographer's Assistantsphotographs and purchasing the photographic Object ID # P.DPC.07173.Astock of local photographers. In 1902,Jackson anda crew of cameramen traveled throughout the country in a specially equipped railroad carcontaining a photographic studio and gallery. At its peak, the company drew upon 40,000negatives for its publishing effort. Jackson and the other company photographerscaptured images ranging from the exotic to the ordinary, including special events, dailyactivities, resorts, cruise ships, and views of cities and countrysides throughout theUnited States and the world. The company also made photographs of businesses to be1Please note that this text, written by Cynthia Read Miller, was originally published in Main Street U.S.A.,in Early Photographs: 113 Detroit Publishing Co. Views. It is based on information found in the DetroitPublishing Company accession file. Additions were made by Rosalie Ehrlich in 1999 and Cynthia ReadMiller in 2001.Page 5 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102used in advertisements and promotions, and photographically reproduced art works fromthe collections of various museums.By 1903, Edwin Husher, who had overseen the production of the color prints, resignedfrom the Photochrom Co. and Jackson began devoting most of his energies to supervisingthe publishing work in Detroit, but always keeping a hand in the making and acquiring ofnew photographic negatives. He supervised a crew of forty artisans and a dozen travelingsalesmen at a time when the company sold seven million prints annually. By this time thecompany had developed an impressive distribution system combining worldwide retailsales, sales at resorts and tourist attractions, and mail-order sales. They maintained retailoutlets in Detroit, New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. They had retail exchangeagreements with the Swiss company Photoglob and with the English licensees of thePhotochrom process, the Photochrom Co., Ltd., in London. Public libraries and schoolsled the mail-order sales, but sales to individuals and independent retail outlets were notignored by the company. The company's encyclopedic coverage of photographic imagesand wide variety of sales approaches demonstrated its eagerness to produce and distributematerial to the broadest possible audience.The Detroit Publishing Co.'s sales boom in the early years of this century slowedconsiderably when its line of business was categorized by the federal government duringWorld War I as "non-essential," i.e., not vital to the war effort. It was, therefore, difficultto acquire material or keep workers employed for the duration of the war. Never reallyrecovering from this slowdown, and feeling the bite of competitors using newer and lesslabor-intensive visual-reproduction methods, in 1924 the company went into receivershipand continued on a smaller scale. Robert B. Livingstone, brother of William A.Livingstone, attempted to carry on the company after William's death in 1924, althoughmost of his efforts were directed toward selling the more than 2,000,000 postcards andprints still on hand.In 1932, the negatives owned by the Detroit Publishing Company were purchased by theOhio Art Company, and moved taken to Byron, Ohio. The negatives were used as thebasis to form a new company. Unfortunately, the name of the company is unknown.Robert B. Livingstone, however, formed a syndicate with which to buy back the DetroitPublishing Company negatives in 1934. The negatives were moved back to Detroit. Thecompany shut its doors for good after the Livingstone’s death in 1936.Even during its most vigorous years, the Detroit Publishing Co. did not produce prints orpostcards from all of its photographic stock. After Robert Livingstone's death, thecompany's extant photographic negatives, master photoprints, sepia and color prints,postcards, and negative record log began a journey that has preserved them for today'sresearchers.The Edison Institute (now known as Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village) acquiredthe remaining Detroit Publishing Co. materials in 1937 from the estate of Robert B.Livingstone. After a decade of persistence by William H. Jackson's son, Clarence, theinstitute agreed to donate the negatives of Western views to the Colorado HistoricalPage 6 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102Society to join the growing collection of Jackson material there, and the negatives ofEastern United States and foreign views to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.The company's negative record log was also sent to Colorado. The Detroit Publishing Co.material in the collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village today consistsof vintage photoprints, postcards, and, color and sepia photomechanical prints. Theoriginal photographs are contact prints made by the company from the original glassplate negatives. They often contain written information about the topic, instructionsconcerning reproduction methods, and, occasionally, retouching marks. In this way thephotographs serve as a visual record documenting the company as well as an era inAmerican life.SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTEThe Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) collection is comprised of several thousanditems. It includes approximately 30,000 small format photographs, 1,000 oversizephotographs, 5,000 photolithographic prints, and 15,000 postcards. These depict a widevariety of subjects. The photographs in this collection were used to produce color printsand postcards using the Photochrom process between 1897 and 1936. (For a descriptionof the Photochrom process, see the book entitled, The Birth of a Century, by JimHughes.) The majority of prints/postcards, however, were produced between 1897 and1914.The DPC collection is comprised of three series. They are 1. Photoprints, 2. ColorPrints, and 3. Postcards. Descriptions of the materials in each series, are contained inthe section preceding the box list for a particular series. It should be noted that thePhotoprints series offers valuable information about the working processes of the DPC.This is especially important because of the limited number of company records inexistence today. Researchers using this collection should be aware of related materials incollections at the Library of Congress and the Colorado Historical Society.The Colorado Historical Society has a large collection of glass negatives, prints,Photochrom prints, and postcards created by the Detroit Publishing Company. Imagesare mostly views west of the Mississippi River. The collection also includes the DetroitPublishing Company negative log. The Colorado Historical Society is located in Denver,Colorado.The Library of Congress has glass plate negatives of views east of the Mississippi. Manyof the negatives held by the Library of Congress have been digitized and can be viewedon-line. Digitized images from the Detroit Publishing Company can be found athttp://lcweb2.loc.gov/detroit/.Page 7 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102ARRANGEMENTSeries 1, PhotoprintsSubseriesI.ArchitectureII. NatureIII. ProductionIV. TransportationV. Sports & RecreationVI. Special EventsVII. Ethnic GroupsVIII. Foreign ViewsSeries 2, Color PrintsSubseriesI.ArchitectureII. Foreign CountriesIII. NatureIV. PeopleV. ProductionVI. TransportationSeries 3, PostcardsSubseriesI.Geographical LocationsII. SubjectsIII. ArtIV. Postcard SetsSUBJECT TERMSNames, Personal and CorporateDetroit Publishing Co.Jackson, William Henry, 1843-1942SubjectsAfrican ities and townsIndustryPage 8 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102Subjects continued:LandscapesManufacturing industriesMineral industriesNational parks and reservesNative AmericansParksRailroadsRecreationResortsRock formations (lctgm)Rural fallsWaterscapes (lctgm)WaterwaysGeographicAsiaCanadaEuropeGrand Canyon (Ariz.)South AmericaUnited StatesYellowstone National ParkYosemite National Park (Calif.)Genre and FormPanoramasPhotographsPhotolithographsPost CardsPage 9 of 94

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102CONTAINER LISTBox no.DescriptionSERIES 1, PHOTOPRINTSThe photoprints in the Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) collection have been dividedinto eight subseries modeled on the company’s conceptualization of their photographicstock. The subseries, based on categories in the DPC trade catalog, are: I.Architecture, II. Nature, III. Production, IV. Transportation, V. Sports &Recreation, VI. Special Events, VII. Ethnic Groups, and VII. Foreign Views.Most of the photoprints in the DPC collection were processed in 1985. At that time, abox list was made which listed all of the folder headings in this series. When the oversizephotographs were added in 1999, the box list was reorganized to reflect the hierarchicalstructure of the organizational scheme. The format of the list indicates the beginning of abox by noting the box number on the left-hand side of the page. If no box numberfollows the folder heading in the list, the box number on the left-hand side of the pageindicates the only box in which a folder with that heading is located. If, however, afolder heading is followed by “See also sz B, Box 49”, folders with this heading will befound both in the box indicated on the left-hand side of the page and in the oversize boxidentified after the folder heading. A folder heading followed by “See sz B, Box 49”,indicates that folders containing these materials are only found in the oversize boxidentified after the folder heading.The Photoprints series of the Detroit Publishing Company collection includes 85 boxes ofphotoprints, ranging in size from small format to panoramic images. The height andwidth of the following oversize box sizes are indicative of the size of the photoprintsfound in the collection:Size B 20 ½ x 16 ½”Size C 20 x 24”Size F 24 x 36”Size N 59 ¾ x 19 ½”Please note that if no box size is indicated in the box list, the photographs are housed inarchival document boxes measuring 11 x 14 inches.The majority of photoprints are located in boxes numbered 1 through 43. Boxes 44through 48 contain primarily medium format photoprints. Large format photoprints arefound in boxes 49 through 85. Although each size may contain panoramic photoprints,the majority of panoramic images will be found in boxes 69 through 85. Manyimpressive panoramic images exist in this collection. One example of the panoramasproduced by the DPC is a view of Manhatten from Brooklyn, New York (see illustrationbelow). This images is comprised of prints made from 8 successive negatives. TheDetroit Publishing Company connected these prints with photographic tape to create apanoramic print measuring 77 x 16 inches. This photoprint is located in the folderlabeled I. Architecture—New York—New York—Panoramic Views (1 of 2) in box59 (see illustration below).Page 10 of 87

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102While some of the images in the collection were created specifically for the DPC, otherswere made from negatives purchased from photographers not working directly for thecompany. As this is the case, it is difficult to date the photographs, as some werecertainly made before the formation of the DPC. This is particularly true of the largenumber of negatives which William Henry Jackson sold to the DPC when he joined thecompany. These may have been made as much as thirty years prior to the founding of thecompany in 1897. Some photoprints do have dates noted on the verso, however, this isthe date that the print was made, not necessarily the date that the photograph was taken.Photographers who worked for the company include Henry Greenwood Peabody,Lycurgus S. Glover, Edward H. Hart, and John S. Johnston. For a list of photographerswhose photographs have been identified in the DPC collection at the HFM & GV, seeAppendix A.Each of the subseries includes working photographic prints used by the DPC to createphotochrom prints and postcards. The working prints illustrate how the DPC createdcolor photochrom prints from black-and-white photographs. Some of the prints in thiscollection have notations on the verso indicating what color objects in the photographsshould be in the final, color print. The information included in these notations oftenpertain to shades of color and the color of the brick/stone utilized in the construction ofbuildings. An example of the notations indicating the colors to be applied to aphotograph can be found in the folder labeled I. Architecture—New York—NewYork—City Squares—Union Square, in box 44. Other photographs demonstrate howan image would be cropped to create the final, printed product. The photograph in thefolder labeled V. Sports & Recreation—Dice Games—Craps in box 48 illustratesthis.The DPC relied heavily on retouching to createfinal photochrome prints. Photographs wereoften retouched to visually enhance the image.The removal of telephone lines/poles, or other“unsightly” objects was common. Images werealso retouched to reduce the number of newnegatives which had to be created each year.Photographic historian Peter B. Hales states thatthe DPC used retouching to modernize images.To do this, they would change things such as thelength of women’s skirts, or paint over olderautomobile models and carriages. 1 NewFigure 1: Retouched photoprintfrom Box 33, III. Production-Manufacturing and Industry-Photographic Companies--DetroitPhotographic Company--ProductionMethods.1Hales, Peter B. William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape.Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988, p. 265.Page 11 of 87

Detroit Publishing Company collectionAccession 37.102buildings constructed after the production of a negative were sometimes just painted intothe photograph. The folder labeled I. Architecture—California—Los Angeles—Panoramic Views in box 69 contains photographs which illustrate this use of retouching.Hand-colored photoprints were also sold by the DPC. Examples of these can be found inthe following folders:I. Architecture—Colorado—Ouray (box 78)I. Architecture—Florida—St. Augustine—Panoramic Views (box 78)II. Nature—California—Waterfalls—Yosemite Falls (box 63)Subseries Descriptions:The Architecture subseries, the largest subseries in the DPC collection, consists ofapproximately 19,000 photoprints of man-made structures.

Detroit Publishing Company collection Accession 37.102 Page 5 of 94 HISTORY1 The Detroit Publishing Co. became a comprehensive publisher of photographic images around the turn of the century. Started in 1895 in Detroit, Michigan, it was known until 1905 by its two subsidiary operations, the Photochrom Co., dealing with the production

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