cartes de visite | Books, Health and History

By Robin Naughton, Digital Systems Manager

Through the Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing New York’s Cultural Heritage grant, the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) sent a mobile scanning unit to the New York Academy of Medicine Library to digitize our collection of cartes de visite, small inexpensive photographs mounted on cards that became popular during the second part of the 19^th century.

Carte-de-visite of Emily Blackwell (1826-1910), English born physician. Photograph by W. Kurtz.

Our collection consists of 223 late 19^th– and early 20^th-century photographs of national and international figures in medicine and public health (individuals on three cartes remain unidentified).

This collection contains portraits both of lesser-known individuals and of famous New York physicians, such as Abraham Jacobi, Lewis Albert Sayre, Willard Parker, Stephen Smith, Emily Blackwell, and Valentine Mott. It also includes many with international reputations: Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolf Virchow, and others. New York photographers took a number of the photographs; others were created by the New York offices of such establishments as Mathew Brady, as well as by photographers in Paris, Berlin, and London.

We are thrilled to share our entire collection on the Digital Culture website. You can view the front and back of each carte, and find out brief information about the physicians and scientists pictured. View all of the Library’s digitized collections.

By Arlene Shaner, Historical Collections Librarian, and Robin Naughton, Digital Systems Manager

The Project

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library received a collaborative Knight New Challenge on Libraries grant, Culture in Transit: Digitizing and Democratizing New York’s Cultural Heritage. The grant allows METRO to send a mobile scanning unit to libraries and cultural institutions around the city to digitize small collections and make them available through METRO’s digital portal and the Digital Public Library of America.

The New York Academy of Medicine proposed to METRO that we digitize our collection of cartes de visite, small inexpensive photographs mounted on cards that became popular during the second part of the 19^th century. Individuals sat for portraits and sent the cards to family members and friends, but photographs of well-known people became popular as souvenirs as well. Their standardized size and the ease with which they could be sent through the mail increased their popularity. Creating souvenir albums of cartes de visite became a popular pastime.

A handwritten note from the box in which our cartes are stored.

Our 223 images are portraits of physicians and scientists, both European and American. From a handwritten note in the box in which our cartes are stored, we know that Dr. Edmund Randolph Peaslee collected some of them while he was in Europe in 1867. His son, Dr. Edward Henry Peaslee, presented them to the Academy in 1924. Unfortunately, we do not know which photographs comprised the original gift. Some of the cartes came to the Academy from other donors and do have the donor information on the versos.

The Challenge

We have been able to identify almost all of the individuals pictured on the cartes, but there are four who still puzzle us. In three cases, we have a last name but have not yet found enough information to make a full identification. For one image, we have no information at all.

Do you recognize these men? Information on the cartes tells us that two of the portraits were taken at the same photographic studio in New York and the other two were taken by different photographers in Germany. Your challenge: if you recognize a face or surname, please help us figure out who the portraits depict.

Maus, Ruf & Dilger Atelier für Photographie & Malerei.

Dr. McMurray, Rockwood & Co Photographers.

Dr. Minor, Rockwood & Co Photographers.

Unknown man, studio of Franz Hanfstaengl, Munich.

Books, Health and History

The New York Academy of Medicine

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Do You Recognize These Men? Help Us Identify 19th-century Carte de Visite Photographs