1690.
The Surgical and Optical Department.
Showing the Album Sketches Contributed by the N.Y. Artists. The negative number of this view is a guess. Stereoviews are on the table; photos on the wall.
Banner for Anthony’s Stereoscopic Emporium hanging across Broadway in front of Anthony’s 308 Broadway store. This view has no Anthony negative number. The assigned number is not an actual Anthony negative number.
Interior View. Anthony’s Photographic and Stereoscopic Warehouse, 501 Broadway. View has no Anthony negative number. The assigned number is not an actual Anthony negative number.
Interior View. Anthony’s Photographic and Stereoscopic Warehouse, 501 Broadway. On back is written “for Mr. McAllister.” This is a great association piece as it appears this view was given to Mr. McAllister, the famous proprietor of the McAllister’s Opticians in Philadelphia. This view has no Anthony negative number. The assigned number is not an actual Anthony negative number.
Broadway Above Park Place. This is actually 60 Nassau Street near John Street, not Broadway. Geo. W. Thorne’s store selling Photographs, albums, etc.
Brooklyn Court House and City Hall in background. Circa 1864. Shows the Photograph Gallery of Charles A. Rawson, 255 & 257 Fulton St. in Brooklyn since 1859. Later moved to 326 Fulton. Also shows Douglass Photo Studio at 330 Fulton St. Corner of Washington St. in 1863.
Artists at Work, Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I believe the man at right is W.E. James. An assistant can be seen working, leaning in the back of the dark wagon.
Camera Obscura. This is Culver’s Camera Obscura, bought from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876.
Mrs. A.H. Bates, Born August 6th, 1848. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 413 Pounds. Capt. M. V. Bates, Born November 9th, 1845. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 478 Pounds. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.
Martin Van Buren Bates (November 9, 1837 – January 19, 1919), known as the “Kentucky Giant” was an American man famed for his great height. He was 7 ft 11 in. tall and weighed 475 lbs.
He began a big growth spurt at some time around the age of six or seven, and was over 6 ft. tall and weighed over 200 lbs. by the time he was twelve years old.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Bates joined the 5th Kentucky Infantry Confederate States Army, as a private, in 1861. His ferocity in battle and imposing figure saw him quickly promoted to the rank of captain. Bates was severely wounded in a battle around the Cumberland Gap area and captured and imprisoned at Camp Chase in Ohio, although he later escaped.
He returned to Kentucky after the war. Before the war, his first occupation was as a schoolteacher. While the circus was on tour in Halifax, Canada, the 7-foot-11-inch-tall Anna Haining Swan visited. She and Martin soon got to know each other, and were married in 1871. The highly publicized wedding, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, England, drew thousands of people to try to attend, due to both the uncommonness of the spectacle and the disarming good nature of the pair. Queen Victoria herself gave them two extra-large diamond-studded gold watches as wedding presents.
Martin and Anna moved to Ohio in 1872, settling in Seville. On 19 May 1872, Anna gave birth to a daughter, who weighed 18 lbs.and died at birth. The couple built a large house to accommodate themselves comfortably. He explains the next few years in his autobiography:
While in Ohio, I purchased a farm in Seville, Medina County. It consisted of 130 acres of good land. I built a house upon it designed especially for our comfort. The furniture was all built to order and to see our guests make use of it recalls most forcibly the good Dean Swift’s traveler in the land of Brobdingnag.
I had determined to become a farmer, so I stocked my farm with the best breeds of cattle, most of them being short horns. My draught horses are of the Norman breed.
My rest was not to last long, for the solicitations of managers, I consented to again travel. The seasons of 1878, 1879 and 1880 found us leading attractions of the W. W. Cole circus.
While we have during these years been blessed with many things, affliction again visited us in the loss of a boy, born on the 15th day of January, 1879. He was 28 inches tall and weighed twenty-three pounds and was perfect in every respect.
Anna Bates died on August 5, 1888. Martin ordered a statue of her from Europe for her grave, sold the oversized house, and moved into the town. In 1889 he remarried, this time to a woman of normal stature, Annette LaVonne Weatherby and lived a mostly peaceful life until his death in 1919 of nephritis.
Anna Swan and Martin Van Buren Bates, husband and wife. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.
Artist’s Studio–Northfield. There is a daguerreotype camera and a stereo camera on the table and many images along the wall.
Coney Island, N.Y.–Main Hall of Hotel Brighton. Sign for “Cabinet Stereoscopic Views of Hotel Brighton 10 cents.”
Gentleman, probably the photographer, looking at stereoviews. Frames and cases in background. Image is pseudoscopic.
Havens’ Views of Sing Sing, N.Y. View down Main St. from Washburn’s Corner. The buildings on both sides as far as the tree were destroyed in the late fire Oct. 9, 1872. “Havens’ Photographs” sign hangs across the street.
Devlin & Co. Clothing for Men, Ready Made, or, made to [order], Broadway, Cor. 12th St. Sign for P.C. Duchochois, Portraits. Peter C. Duchochois was the author of the book “The Lighting in Photographic Studios published in NY in 1893.
Photo wagon of A.E. Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss Views & Life Size Pictures. Cigar store Indian at right.
The Penryn Slate Co. Quarries on the west hill across the slateyard & Middle Granville-Raceway Rd. (1880). Photo wagon of B.C. Kinney in lower left.
183. J.G. Vail’s Photograph Gallery, Skylight Room. Written on back is “Ja’s & Nettie Vail.” This is the photographer and his wife.
Mr. & Mrs. Ja’s Vail’s Wedding presents. Victor, NY. This is related to the previous view of the photographer and his wife.
Camera set-up in the background. Child in carriage is holding a doll and what looks like a black owl toy.
398. Camp Life, Upper Ausable Pond, Sept. 8, 1876. Seneca Ray Stoddard self portrait sitting at the table facing camera. The string to pull the shutter is visible.
Self-portrait of Colonel Speck with huge camera from the studio of McFarlin & Speck’s Studio, Elmira, NY.
Rock City, (near Olean). There is a photographer working under the dark tent at right, his hat lays on the ground.