Interior of the Vermont Citizen office, between 1873 and 1881.
The American Antiquarian Society houses one of the country's largest collections of pre-1900 American stereographs. Stereographs, an early form of three-dimensional photograph, were a major vehicle for popular education and entertainment in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Stereographs were also used for journalistic reporting on many of the current events of the period: parades, disasters, wars, and political events.
Stereographs are made with two almost identical photographs, side by side, to be viewed through a stereoscope. The author Oliver Wendell Holmes, who invented an affordable stereo viewer for the American market, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly of June 1859 that "the first effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. The elbow of a figure stands forth as to make us almost uncomfortable."
Stereography was a commercial success. Many displayed views of far-away lands, making the travel experience, through photography, available to the general population. Its affordability and availability made stereography a widespread phenomenon spanning over sixty years.
The images in this collection date from the mid-1850s to after the First World War. Most were made in the 1870s and 1880s. The collection includes examples of several photographic technologies, including some rare glass slides of Niagara Falls produced in the 1850s by the Langenheim Brothers. Color and monochrome photolithographs are also found here, although the overwhelming majority of the prints are albumen.
The collection contains fifty to sixty thousand stereograph cards. Most are views of American landscapes and city scenes. All regions of the continental United States and Canada are well represented.
Access
A complete box and subject list for this collection is available.
Over 800 stereographs with Civil War content are available through the Society's digital image archive.
Resources
William Culp Darrah. The World of Stereographs. (Gettysburg, Pa., ca. 1977).
Points of View, edited by Edward Earle (Rochester, N.Y.: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1979).
