Browse Items (26 total)

The Smith brothers owe their introduction to the view making business to Edwin Whitefield. Francis and George Warren Smith worked as agents for Whitefield—they sold subscriptions in the various towns and cities he drew—as early as 1846, and…

Located along the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, West Pittston (not surprisingly, due west of Pittston, just across the Susquehanna) lies at the heart of Wyoming Valley, a broad, crescent shaped lowland in…

J. Thomas Williams was a photographer in York during the 1850s who, like most photographers of his day, employed the daguerreotype process, and not only to make portraits. Evidently in an attempt to break into the view making business, he brought…

In 1850, Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania since 1812, hosted a single railway, constructed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran just east of the city, paralleling the Pennsylvania Canal. Within three decades, around the time this…

The decision to capture a town in print was often exciting news, and local newspapers, seeing the venture as an opportunity to stimulate the growth of the community, regularly reported on the projects with enthusiasm. When C. J. Corbin traveled to…

Double views are relatively rare, especially in the case of Altoona and Tyrone, which are not adjacent to one another but rather separated by some fourteen miles. The Pennsylvania Railroad may have been the common denominator. Altoona, of course, was…