Old Glass Slides of New York Buildings

I've acquired nine 3 ¼ inch glass magic lantern slides (mostly) of buildings in New York City, dating I think from the early 20th century. I have just photographed them on a light box, when I get time I will scan them on my Epson 4870 flatbed as I think there's a lot more detail available. The patterned frames around the actual images seem unusual, although they would not have been seen during projection. I wonder how many of these still exist.

 

 

Singer Building and Part of Financial District, Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, Times Building

 

 

The Bush Terminal Sales Building, New Municipal Building, Equitable Building 7th Avenue and 31st Street

 

 

A shipboard scene, St Patrick's Cathedral, some youngsters outside a building

 

 

The box they came in is also of interest, from the good old pre-digital days, when chemistry was king - Wellington SCP Lantern Plates For Gaslight Printing and Development.

 

Thanks for looking.

Fascinating. Particularly interesting is St Pat's Cathedral.

 

WW

Fascinating. I know very little about how these glass slides work, so one question. Is the sepia tone how the slide looked when it was shot, or is that the result of some aging process?

Thanks for the comments. Looking at the slides again in daylight I think the sepia tone is somewhat exaggerated in my pictures - done on a light box with a warmish tone. I did enhance the contrast slightly as the images are rather faded. I will scan them accurately over the next couple of days and post some examples without the borders. I don't know anything about the process by which these are produced.

Fascinating. I know very little about how these glass slides work, so one question. Is the sepia tone how the slide looked when it was shot, or is that the result of some aging process?

When reading the instructions it appears that warm or brown tones were desirable back then. That’s interesting I think.

Amazing detail !

I've now scanned them at 2400dpi. And revealed some more detail but it's obvious that these pictures were photographed from halftone prints, probably from a book. When blown up the half tone dots are very obvious (last picture). The two non-architectural images don't have the dots, they look like simple photographs. It's also clear that the buildings show no evidence of converging verticals, so they were either done with the camera level, i.e from some height, or with a view camera with movements.

 

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by John Seaman

Movements on a view camera at ground level won't enable you to see the roof of buildings and vehicles higher than you. So the original shots ( whether on a view camera using movements or not) must have originated some way above ground level.

They look like drawings not photos.

They look like drawings not photos.

That's what halftones look like--these are too uniform to be drawings.

Interesting find. The kind of images that were used to make photochrom.s often for colorized postcards.

Great find- thanks for posting:

 

Here is a scan of a tinted glass slide of what is now known as the Koester Block in Marysville KS - together with a 1970s view of the same

 

 

They look like drawings not photos.

 

The more I look at these, the more I think they are some kind of combinations of photographs and drawings. For example, in the Bush Terminal Sales picture, the shadows of the people all point away from the buildings. But if the sun were in that direction, the whole sidewalk including the figures would be in the shadow of the taller buildings.

Maybe a composite. The photographer was using the cloning feature. :)

Whatever else these are, they are also pretty darn cool. I'm always amazed at all the varying aspects of photography over the ages.

Thanks for posting.

The vehicles in front of the Bush Terminal look to me like drawings. On the other hand, everything associated with the Times Building and New Municipal Building look like photographs. If photographs, the photographer was on a roof and used a view camera with tilts to keep the vertical lines parallel. As John says, they look like a combination of photographs and drawings.

What a great acquire.

 

Early 20th century post processing, so it begins - what goes around comes around.

Using large formats, it was not unusual to retouche on the plates, often with pencil.