Henry G. Peabody Collection of Photographs and Negatives

The Peabody Collection consists of 672 glass plate negatives (4 x 5 inch, 5 x 7 inch, and 8 x 10 inch), 1054 film negatives (4 x 5 inch, 5 x 7 inch, 8 x 10 inch, and stereograph), 24 photograph albums (housing 1174 photographs), and 887 loose photographs (boudoir cards, cartes-de-visite, stereographs, 8 x 10 inch prints, and large mounted prints), published works, and manuscript material (ledgers, catalogs, correspondence, and ephemeral materials), created and collected by Henry G. Peabody, 1859-1993 (bulk 1890s-1900s). The materials describe Peabody's long career as a commercial landscape photographer working on both the east and west coasts of the United States.

The photographs and negatives depict Peabody and his family; landscape views in New England, Canada, the western United States, California, and Mexico; Native Americans; city and landscape views in Great Britain, France, and Switzerland; portraits; architectural renderings; plants and animals; unidentified landscapes; and miscellaneous images.

The images of Peabody and his family consist of portraits of Peabody, his wife Dora, and daughter Mildred; family photographs; and images from family trips. The majority were taken by Peabody in his studio at 52 Boylston Street in Boston; a few were created by Peabody while in partnership with Alexander Hesler in Chicago; and others were taken by Hesler and other photographers. Also included are views of Peabody with his camera equipment in the outdoors, views of Peabody's studio in Pasadena, oversize group photographs of Peabody's tenth reunion at Dartmouth College, and the interior of "Car 159" (Peabody's private car on the Boston and Maine Railroad). The family photographs include images of Dora and Mildred in Massachusetts, and many images of Mildred--at summer camp on Lake Champlain in Vermont, with friends, and at various national parks. Peabody's house at 800 Prospect Boulevard in Pasadena is represented, as is his sailboat, the Venture. Two photograph albums describe a trip taken by Peabody, his wife, and friends to the north, south, and middle forks of the King's River circa 1900. Other family images include a group photograph of Peabody's father's fiftieth Dartmouth reunion and a portrait of Peabody's Aunt Helen.

Peabody's New England photographs consist exclusively of city and landscape views. Included are stereograph views of Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut and Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts; historic sites in and around Boston; the Massachusetts coast; New Hampshire; the coast of Maine; Lake Champlain and Mallett's Bay in Vermont; and images of the Boston and Maine Railroad trains and ferries. Many of these images include Dora and Mildred Peabody; many were published in Picturesque New England (box 50); and many have identifications written by Peabody on the verso.

Peabody's work in Western Canada consists entirely of photographs of the Canadian Rockies in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Included are various mountains, mountain ranges, glaciers, and lakes in Banff National Park, Glacier National Park, and Yoho National Park. Some of the photographs were taken for the Detroit Publishing Company and have imprinted copyright information; others bear Peabody's copyright.

Peabody's images of the Western United States' national parks and monuments depict Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Mountains, and Shoshone Canyon and Buffalo Bill Dam; Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park; the Grand Canyon; Yosemite National Park and assorted national parks and monuments in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico; Death Valley; Canyonlands National Park and Glacier National Park; Hoover Dam; the Snake River in Idaho; Ship's Rock in New Mexico; Monument Valley; and San Xavier del Bac Mission. Some of the images were produced by Spence Air Photos and Charles F. Lummis.

Views of California include street scenes and buildings in central Los Angeles; Hollywood; Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley; Long Beach; Avalon Bay; the Mojave Desert; northern California; Riverside County; the San Bernardino Mountains; San Diego County; San Francisco and vicinity; Santa Barbara County; Ventura County; the California Missions; and unidentified California landscapes, residences, and ocean views.

Images of Mexico consist of sights and churches in Mexico City, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Taxco, Guadalajara, Vera Cruz, Cordova, Celaya, Cholula, Chapultepec, Puebla, Tepozotlan, Cuernavaca; Mounts Orizaba and Popocatepetl; and various miscellaneous images. Some of these were published in Sylvester Baxter's Spanish Colonial architecture in Mexico.

Peabody's European images are primarily in two photograph albums, one of Great Britain, the second of France and Switzerland. The Great Britain album contains images of London; Stratford-upon-Avon; and cathedrals in Peterborough, Lincoln, York, and Chester. The France album contains images of Paris (specifically Notre Dame Cathedral); Chartres, Amiens, and Rheims cathedrals; and Lucerne and the Swiss Alps.

Native American images depict members of the Navajo, Hopi and Papago tribes; examples of Navajo architecture; Walpi and Oraibi, two Hopi communities; and miscellaneous images.

Peabody's studio work is documented by portraits in boudoir photograph format. These include portraits of women, men, women and children, and children.

The collection includes photographs of a number of architectural plans and renderings. These include work by architects Allison and Allison, Buchanan and Brockway, Foss Designing and Building Company, Hubert Frohman and Harold H. Martin, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Elmer Grey, Myron Hunt, and Withey and Davis; engineers W.P. Shepherd and Herbert A. Hamm; and landscape architect Paul G. Thiene.

Other images include plants and animals; images of students at work in a classroom; copies of daguerrotypes and paintings; and photographs of the Handy Stereopticon.

Peabody's published work is represented by three texts. Picturesque New England, published by or for the Boston and Maine Railroad, contains photomechanical views of numerous mountains, lakes, rivers, the seashore, and historic and "picturesque" sites in New England. The fair city contains 49 original photographs of selected buildings and attractions of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition "photographed, enlarged and printed by Henry G. Peabody." Glimpses of the Grand Canyon of Arizona contains text and reproductions of Peabody's photographs.

The manuscript material that accompanies Peabody's photographs and negatives provides background information on the photographer's travels, professional interests, and commercial output. It consists of ledgers and negative lists; commercially published catalogs; correspondence; ephemera; and materials collected by Robert Weinstein. The ledgers and negative lists record information about Peabody's negatives, such as negative number, size, title/subject, and copyright date. The negative lists detail negatives for some of the national parks and monuments in the Western United States, and the Canadian Rockies. The catalogs were published by Peabody and list the slides (lantern and film), manuals, and films that made up his Swastika Educational Series. The correspondence consists of letters to and from Henry Peabody and various businesses and individuals (including the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway; Bell and Howell Company; Dartmouth College; Encyclopedia Britannica; Ideal Pictures Corporation; National Geographic Magazine; the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; and the Society for Visual Education). Much of it concerns sales of Peabody's slides and albums to private individuals, schools, and museums; technical discussions about the projection of his films and slides; sales, purchases, and discussions of projection equipment; and slide and film production. The ephemera consists of a scrapbook created by Henry Peabody, a brochure about the Grand Canyon published by Gates Tours, and scripts for Peabody's lectures on El Camino Real. The scrapbook documents Peabody's youth and career and contains, among other items, catalogues of Peabody's work; the slide narration for Peabody's lecture on Zion National Park; a floor plan of his Boylston Street (Boston) studio; subscription announcements for Peabody's publications; price lists for Peabody's services and for photographic equipment; Peabody lecture programs; an advertisement and brochure for the sale of Peabody's house at 640 North Prospect Boulevard, Pasadena; ephemeral materials; Swastika Educational Series brochures and catalogs; and Peabody's Christmas cards (featuring his hand-colored photographs). The Gates Tours brochure, What the tourists say, contains quotes about the experience of seeing the Grand Canyon. The El Camino Real scripts are Peabody's narrations written to accompany his slide lectures. The materials collected by Robert Weinstein include autobiographical and biographical material on Peabody; notes and photocopies created by Weinstein; an essay on Peabody; letters to and from Weinstein; and some of Peabody's lecture scripts.