Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880 - 1920

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Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company 1880-1920, provides numerous opportunities to develop critical thinking skills. The images in this collection can be used to create an illustrated timeline depicting monuments to historic events. Special "photochrom" plates provide an opportunity to discuss the merits of coloring black-and-white photographs as well as mass producing contemporary artwork. Other photographs in this collection provide an opportunity to assess race relations in the late-nineteenth century and to further investigate the role of the railroad system in the industrial development of the nation.

Chronological Thinking Skills

A search on the term, monument, produces hundreds of images of statues and memorials from across the United States. Some familiar structures such as the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. appear along with lesser-known works. The collection contains monuments commemorating events and individuals from the colonial period, such as New York's Henry Hudson Memorial and Virginia's Monument to Captain John Smith. Memorials reflecting a divided nation include Confederate monuments constructed in Kentucky and Maryland. These various images provide an opportunity to create illustrated timelines and maps that demonstrate how the nation remembers its history.

A Monument Commemorating Captain John Smith's Seventeenth-Century Exploits.

• What historical events are represented in these monuments?
• Considering that it often takes years to plan, fund, and construct a monument, why do you think that these events were chosen for memorials?
• How does the scale of a monument and its design reflect the event or person that it commemorates?
• How do the monuments represented in this collection compare to contemporary memorials such as Washington, D.C.'s Vietnam War Memorial in terms of design and meaning?
• What might account for changes in the way memorials are designed?
• How do you think that the construction of contemporary national monuments in Washington, D.C., has influenced the construction of monuments in cities throughout the United States?

Historical Comprehension: Nature and Industry in the United States

Artists such as William Henry Jackson joined expeditions to the western frontier and returned with beautiful and inspiring images. These efforts to document the nation's natural landscape often generated initiatives to both preserve it and to see it in person. The collection's Subject Index reflects a nation in transition, as photographers documented both the natural landscape and the industrial development that altered it. These images can be used in conjunction with other American Memory collections such as Railroad Maps: 1820-1900 and The Evolution of the Conservation Movement to examine the relationship between environmentalism and industrial growth.

Mt. Washington From Near Base Station, White Mountains

Steam engines driving the late-eighteenth century Industrial Revolution propelled new forms of mass transportation in the nineteenth century. Locomotives were ideal for traveling across the dry and mountainous terrains stretching from the middle of the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Federal funding and land grants fueled the railroad industry, resulting in more than 200,000 miles of tracks, including five transcontinental routes, by the end of the century. A search on the term railroad produces over 1,000 images of locomotives, tracks, stations, tunnels, and bridges in a variety of environments across the U.S. Meanwhile, searches on terms such as forest and park yield images of the natural world both in isolation and impacted by civilization.

• What do you think was the environmental impact of the railroad industry?
• In March 1872, over two million acres in Yellowstone became the world's first national park for "the benefit and enjoyment of the people." What do you think is the value of creating a national park?
• Why do you think that people visit national parks?
• Railroad lines and automobiles reached Yellowstone in the early-twentieth century and increased park attendance. Do you think that the arrival of locomotives and automobiles altered the potential "benefit and enjoyment" of the park?
• Do you think that it is possible to maintain a balance between the demands of conservation and business? Preservation and tourism?

Historical Analysis and Interpretation: Chinese Americans

Chinese immigrants living in the United States in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries often maintained traditional customs and dress while living in distinct neighborhoods known as Chinatowns. These immigrants were also targeted by many strict immigration laws. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. Subsequent bills such as the Anti-Chinese Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892 added new restrictions to the entry and re-entry of Chinese immigrants. A search on the phrase, Chinese Americans, yields images of adults and children dressed in traditional Chinese garments. With the exception of two photographs, "Chinese Americans in an Opium Den" and a scene from New York's Chinatown, the subjects in these photographs are anonymous but identifiable because of their distinctive clothing.

A Chinese-American Child in Traditional Dress.

• What types of activities and poses are featured in these photographs?
• How do these photographs and captions portray Chinese Americans? Do they reflect the status of Chinese Americans in U.S. society at the time?
• What motives, attitudes, and interests do you think that the photographer might have had? What evidence is there to support your conclusion?
• Do these photographs voice any opinion about the status of Chinese Americans in the U.S.? Do they seem sympathetic, critical, or objective? What evidence is there for such interpretations?
• How do you think that audiences were likely to have reacted to these images?
• Search on the phrase, African Americans. How do the photographs of Chinese immigrants compare to images of African Americans in terms of subject matter, composition, dress, pose, and captions?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making

Businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr. and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher formed the Detroit Photographic Company in the late 1890s. They soon obtained the rights to "photochrom," a Swiss process for converting black-and-white photographs into color images and for mass producing color postcards, prints, and albums. Many of the images in this collection are reproductions of paintings created through the "photochrom" process.

A search on the phrase, autochrome color, yields over 100 color reproductions of paintings, including works by artists such as John Singer Sargent , William Sergeant Kendall, and Gari Melchers. To reproduce these images, a black-and-white photograph of the painting is colored to match the original.

A Reproduction of John Singer Sargent's Watercolor, "Bedouins."

A Reproduction of William Sergeant Kendall's "An Interlude."

A Reproduction of Gari Melchers's "Penelope."

• How do you think that the quality of reproductions compare to the quality of original works?
• Why do you think that people purchase reproductions such as these?
• Do you think that such reproductions increase or decrease the value of the original work?
• Do you think that reproductions affect the meaning of the original work?
• How do you think that artists feel about the reproduction of their work?
• Do you think that there are differences between reproducing visual works of art such as photographs or paintings and reproducing works in other media such as film or audio recordings?
• Do you think that the ease, quality, and availability of digital reproductions has changed the debate? If so, how?

Historical Research Capabilities: The Detroit Photographic Company's "photochrom Process"

This collection's Subject Index, features 313 color photochrom prints. These mass-produced images of cities (e.g., Denver, Colorado), university buildings (e.g., Harvard House), and natural landscapes (e.g., Grand Canyon) can be used as the basis for examining how popular prints reflected and influenced cultural trends in the United States.

A photochrom Image of the Grand Canyon.

Mulberry Street, New York City.

What types of images were mass-produced in color? Why do you think that a person would purchase these prints? Where do you think that these images were displayed? What do you think that these images imply about popular subjects and artists during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries? How do the subjects of these prints relate to events such as the growing environmental movement or industrialization? Why do you think that color renditions of black-and-white photographs were so popular? Are there contemporary products that use a similar process?