Cisterns Fantasia

A few months ago, I posted an unidentified photograph of a New Orleans cistern. Here is a suite of New Orleans cisterns with fanciful caps, an image from the Keystone-Mast Collection at the University of California-Riverside Museum of Photography, available through the Online Archive of California (OAC). The photographer, subjects, date and exact location are unknown. The stereograph was manufactured by the Keystone View Company, which became one of the largest commerical stereograph producers in the country by the early twentieth century.

B.L. Singley of Meadville, Pennsylvania founded Keystone in 1892 to market photographs he had taken of the French Creek flood. The company continued to manufacture educational photographs and slides until 1963, when it was purchased by the Mast Development Company. The Southeastern Architectural Archive has an extensive collection of architectural lantern slides, many manufactured by Chicago's McIntosh Stereopticon Company.