Displacement

This week is my last at Tulane University Libraries' Southeastern Architectural Archive. I have taken a position as head of the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections at Kansas State University.

In sorting through personal and professional files, I've come across a few things I had set aside to investigate later. Photographs of costumed ladies posed against painted backdrops, a flood-devastated western town, bright linens hanging outside a rustic lakeside cabin (above). I acquired all these images by digging through boxes at the Originals Mall of Antiques in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. None of them bore any textual identification, familial or geographic designations.

The Western Town

A series of three photographs documented some natural disaster, possibly a bad storm and/or flood. I had speculated the pictures were from the late 19-teens, but using a Peak Lupe 8x Model 2018, I could make out the following building markers:

Hotel Vail (below,  left)

Santa Fe / The Hub (below, center)

The Hotel Vail is still standing and is on the National Register, so identifying the locale as Pueblo, Colorado was fairly easy.

Not knowing anything about Pueblo's history, I used America's Historic Newspapers database and Denver Public Library's Digital Collections to confirm that the event was the June 3, 1921 flood. The unidentified photographer focused his/her lens on the the vicinity of the high water mark along Union Avenue. At its peak, the flood covered over 300 square miles.

The Photo Postcard Studio

A series of four real-photo postcards presented women dressed in costumes set against painted backdrops or decorative curtains. They seemed to be from the 1940s, and given the subject matter, most likely from the Great Plains. The photographer used EKC paper with undivided backs, but none of the versos bear anything more distinctive.

There is a Cultivator

And a Reaper

And Two Harvesters

And a Geisha

Yes, a geisha. With a cherry blossom kimono and a peacock-feathered fan.

In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in rural studio photography:

The John Michael Kohler Art Center's current exhibit Bringing to Light: The Massengill Family Photo Collection (through 17 January) features portraits produced in an Arkansas mobile studio. Many of the images are hand-colored close-up photographs; some can be viewed via Maxine Payne's 2004 Making Pictures: Three for a Dime.

Luc Sante's Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard (2009) addresses the proliferation of small-town photo postcards during the early twentieth century. Sante's interest in the format stemmed from a random encounter with a New York peddler over thirty years ago.

Reproduction & Preservation

We have mentioned in an earlier post the relationship between architectural reprographic processes and jazz music in New Orleans. Tulane University's Hogan Jazz Archive retains the blueprint-laden manuscript collection of local musician John Hyman, aka Johnny Wiggs.

For those interested in large format duplication processes, catalogs published by the Eugene Dietzgen Company provide considerable information. Product number 4310B (top image) was a sheet washer for developing blueprints and negative prints in running water. A clamping device fixed the drawing into a near-vertical position for the washing process. Wet prints could be dried on the rack attached to the top of the washer.

Dietzgen vacuum print frames were sold individually (bottom image) or with high power arc lamps (central image). The company recommended the individual print frame for both electric and sun printing. The frame's vacuum pump connected to a rubber blanket designed to keep the sensitized paper and the trace material firmly in position against the glass plate.

When the vacuum print frame was coupled with the lamps, Dietzgen recommended its use for processing Vandykes and Edco process prints. The latter was the company's method of reproducing original tracings by making a Vandyke negative of the original tracing and then placing the intermediate directly atop a sensitized cloth (called Edco Process Cloth) and exposing the sheets to light as one would do in the development of a blueprint. After the Edco Process Cloth was exposed, the technician would rinse it with water, apply a developing liquid, rinse it a second time, and hang the print out to dry.

Companies such as Dietzgen encouraged architectural and engineering businesses to make duplicates of original tracings for preservation purposes: "This is the best insurance known, for the duplicate may be filed away in a vault, or elsewhere, safe from loss or damage by fire."(1)

(1)Catalog of Eugene Dietzgen Co., Manufacturers Blue Print Papers/Drafting Room supplies/Survey Instruments/and Accessories/Measuring Tapes. Chicago: Eugene Dietzgen Co., 1931, p. 33.

Images above:  Catalog of Eugene Dietzgen Co., Manufacturers Blue Print Papers/Drafting Room supplies/Survey Instruments/and Accessories/Measuring Tapes. Chicago: Eugene Dietzgen Co., 1931.
Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Blueprints & Jazz

New Orleans' Warren Easton High School was originally founded as a public school for boys, formed by the consolidation of earlier schools located "above" and "below" Canal Street. With a new building designed by E.A. Christy (completed 1913), Warren Easton boasted a centralized Canal Street location and modern educational facilities to match. By the 1930s, the school was particularly noted for its mechanical drawing course.

John W. Hyman (1899-1977) taught mechanical drawing at Warren Easton High School for nearly two decades, from the 1920s-1940s. Tulane School of Architecture faculty member Milton Scheuermann, Jr. was one of Hyman's students, and tells the story of how Professor Hyman and fellow student Pete Fountain (born 1930) used Easton's blueprinting machine to copy music. Hyman and Fountain washed the prints, then "pasted" the wet blueprints on the chalkboard; when the blueprints dried, they naturally detached from the chalkboard and fell to the floor.

During the period he was teaching mechanical drawing, Professor Hyman had an important side gig performing jazz cornet. He made his first recordings under the name "John Hyman's Bayou Stompers," eventually adopted the stage name "Johnny Wiggs" and retired from teaching. Read more about Wiggs in The Jazz Archivist.

Images above: TOP: Wickes Bros. Blueprint Machine, Southern Architect and Building News (March 1919). The Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. BOTTOM: Joan Whitehead, photographer. Johnny Wiggs "Congo Square" and Other Vintage Material Album Cover from OffBeat: Louisiana Music and Culture. URL: www.offbeat.com/2011/01/01/johnny-wiggs-congo-square-and-other-vintage-material-ghb-records/

Reproduction beyond Digital

For those interested in the history of mechanical reproduction and the refinements of different historic processes, the Rochester Image Permanence Institute /The Archival Advisor have recently retooled their collection of digital samples.  The site is under construction but promises to be a primary resource for the identification, comparison, history and preservation of pre-photographic, photomechanical and photographic processes.  Hopefully they will expand their list of photographic processes and also include architectural and cartographic reproduction methods.

How to access:  simply go to http://www.digitalsamplebook.com/home.htm.

The site is similar in approach to Bamber Gascoigne's wonderful How to Identify Prints, published by Thames and Hudson and an invaluable resource for archivists, art historians, cultural historians, rare books librarians, and print collectors.

For scholars, Luis Nadeau's Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes (out of print) is peerless.