Collection: Burr McIntosh Photographic Prints, 1900-1910

Description: Burr McIntosh (1862-1942) established his first studio in 1901 on West 33rd Street, across from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a meeting place of many of the society and theatrical people whose portraits he would take. This project will cover digitization of 3,825 photographic prints, to be added to 596 existing digitized photographic negatives from the collection, creating a comprehensive digital archive of this important early twentieth-century photographer who recorded the fashionable elite in New York City at the end of the Gilded Age. Most of the images in the collection are society and celebrity portraits. Actors Ethel and John Barrymore appear at the seashore; philanthropist A.G. Vanderbilt celebrates a holiday at his Adirondack lodge. The collection also includes images of children playing, professional New York theatrical groups, horse shows and events including polo and fox hunting, sailing at Newport, Rhode Island, and various buildings. The images constitute a remarkable record of high society and the world of entertainment in the first decade of the twentieth century, but the collection also includes unexpected material, such as the photographs taken in 1905 when McIntosh accompanied Secretary of War William H. Taft as the official photographer on his peace trip to the Philippines, stopping on the way in Hawaii, Japan, and China.The vast majority of the estimated 4,141 prints were made by N-YHS in the late 1940s from glass plate negatives taken during the period 1900-1910; the negatives were destroyed after being printed.