Collection digitized? Yes. The original negatives
have been digitized and are available in the Prints and Photographs
Online Catalog. View a selection of
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In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased from Alice H. Cox
and Mary H. Evans, the daughters of Levin C. Handy approximately
10,000 original, duplicate, and copy negatives. The L.C. Handy
Studio had been located at 494 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington,
DC. Levin C. Handy (1855?-1932) was apprenticed at the age
of twelve to his uncle, famed Civil War photographer Mathew
B. Brady (1823?-1896). Handy became an independent photographer
and over the years owned studios in partnership with Samuel
Chester and with Chester and Brady. The Maryland Avenue studio
was the most permanent and was the place where Levin Handy
resided at his death in 1932. In the 1890s Brady himself had
worked and lived at the Maryland Avenue address.
E. and H.T. Anthony acquired
Brady's Civil War negatives
as payment for his debt to that
photographic supply company.
These
negatives, distinguished by
the prefix LC-B8, were purchased
by the Library in 1943 and are
known as the Civil War Photographs
Collection. They are available
separately through the Prints
and Photographs Online Catalog.
The remaining negatives in the Brady-Handy studio that came
to the Library through the 1954 purchase are known as the Brady-Handy
Collection and are distinguished by the prefix LC-BH8. The
majority of the Brady-Handy negatives are of Civil War and
post-Civil War portraits, with a small collection of Washington
views. The online collection shown here includes primarily
original glass plate negatives. Many duplicate and copy negatives
were not scanned.
Mathew Brady
In the mid-nineteenth century, Mathew Brady operated one of
the most prominent portrait studios in New York City and Washington,
D.C. The Library's Brady-Handy negative collection includes
work produced by Brady's New York and Washington, D.C., studios
during the 1850s through the early 1900s. In addition to portraits,
the studio photographed many of Washington's well-known buildings
and monuments, and events such as inaugurations and parades.
In 1844 Brady opened his first daguerreotype studio on the
corner of New York's Broadway and Fulton Streets, near P. T.
Barnum's museum. His studio and gallery was one of the city's
most prominent, attracting countless celebrities whose portraits
were displayed on the gallery's walls. Although he was acknowledged
as a master of the daguerreotype, Brady did not usually operate
the camera himself because of his poor eyesight. Instead, he
thoughtfully posed his sitters and made them feel comfortable
in front of the camera, while a technician actually took the
photograph.
In 1849 Brady opened a studio in Washington, D. C., hoping
to attract members of the U.S. House and Senate and augment
his growing collection of portraits. The studio was not financially
successful and within the year he was forced to close it due
to high operating expenses and competition from other, more
experienced studios. Ten years later, when he opened a studio
on Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue, Brady met with more financial
success.
Brady's most important contribution to American history was
his documentation of the Civil War. In 1861 he began sending
photographers into the field. Many of the best Civil War photographers
got their start working with him. They produced conventional
portraits, scenes in camp, and views of the aftermath of battlefields.
Although actual battle scenes were technically impossible to
photograph, the devastating impact of the war was documented
nonetheless.
Levin C. Handy
When he was only twelve, Mathew Brady's nephew, Levin Corbin
Handy, began working in the Brady studio. His first job consisted
of coating glass plate negatives with a light-sensitive emulsion.
Within a few years, he had become a skilled camera operator.
In 1871 Levin C. Handy's name first appears in a Washington,
D.C. business directory listed as a photographer. In the 1880s
he formed a partnership with Samuel C. Chester which lasted
about four years. In 1883 Chester and Handy were mentioned
in Mathew Brady's advertisements. In addition to portraiture,
Handy provided photographic services to the Library of Congress
and other Federal agencies. He also offered photoduplication
services to Library patrons and between 1880 and 1896 he documented
the construction of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building.
After Mathew Brady's death on January 15, 1896, his remaining
photography files became the property of Levin C. Handy. Handy
died in March 1932, leaving his own work and that of his famous
uncle to his two daughters, Mrs. Alice H. Cox and Mrs. Mary
H. Evans. In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased approximately
10,000 original, duplicate, and copy negatives from Handy's
daughters.
Glass Plate Negatives
During the nineteenth century, the process of taking photographs
was complex and time-consuming. In the 1860s and '70s photographers
mixed their own chemicals and prepared their own wet plate
negatives. To prepare the negatives, a clean sheet of glass
was coated with collodion and immediately placed in a silver
nitrate solution to sensitize the plate to light. After it
was sensitized, the negative was placed in a light tight holder
and inserted into the camera, which already had been positioned
and focused. The plate was then exposed and immediately developed.
After development, the photographs were printed on paper and
mounted.
In the 1880s dry plate negatives were introduced. These glass
negatives were commercially available and did not need to be
developed immediately after the exposure.
The Carte-de-Visite
Many of the glass plate negatives in the Brady-Handy collection
had been used to make carte-de-visite portraits. The carte-de-visite
is a small, mounted photograph measuring approximately 4 x
2-1/2". It was patented by the French photographer Andre
Adolphe Disderi in 1854. Its name is derived from the popular
calling or visiting cards that guests often exchanged with
their hosts.
Inexpensive to produce, in the 1860s the cartes-de-visite
became very popular in the 1860s with the general public which
delighted in collecting portraits of political figures, actors
and actresses, Civil War generals, as well as family and friends.
Special photo albums were designed especially for cartes-de-visite.
Carte-de-visite cameras used multiple lenses that could expose
several images at once or several different poses on a single
glass plate negative. Once developed, the negative was contact
printed, and the individual prints were cut out and mounted.
It is because of this that researchers will find multiple negatives
of the same pose, e.g., portrait of E. White, LC-BH82-4540
A, B, and C, and negatives containing two or three images,
such as the one illustrated here.
The Brady studio produced hundreds of cartes-de-visite of
famous personalities, and its imprint appeared on the front
or back of the photographic mount. These portraits were a great
source of income for the studio, but Brady himself did not
like the carte-de-visite format, preferring instead the earlier
daguerreotype.
In organizing the negatives, the Library grouped them by
size and broad subject areas. In 2002 the Library scanned those
groups which consisted primarily of original glass plate negatives.
The groups which consisted primarily of duplicate and copy
negatives were not scanned.
Search tip: Information in the
catalog record that accompanies each scanned negative was taken
from the paper sleeve which housed the negative, and no attempt
was made to standardize names, spell out abbreviations, or
to research the image. Patrons searching for portraits will
have the most success by entering only the last name of the
person being sought. For example, a search for "Montgomery
C. Meigs" will yield two records, while a search for "Meigs" will
yield six, including ones titled "M.C. Meigs" and "General
Meigs."
The groups of negatives scanned include:
LC-BH82
2343 original wet plate glass negatives and some copy negatives
made for the production of cartes de visite, primarily 2-1/4
x 3-1/2", made between 1855-1865
Presidents of the United States, their wives, members of
Congress, military and naval officers, actors, artists, religious
leaders, and other notables. Included in this series are
portraits of Presidents John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore,
and Andrew Johnson; Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, and Mrs. Ulysses
S. Grant; Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton; Generals Ulysses
S. Grant, Joseph Hooker, John Sedgwick; Admirals David G.
Farragut, David D. Porter; artists Constantino Brumidi and
George P. A. Healy; the poet William Cullen Bryant and Samuel
F. B. Morse, artist and inventor.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH823
8 original wet plate negatives, individual stereograph pairs,
4x5", circa 1860
Views of Washington, D.C. : Treasury Building, Washington
Monument [unfinished], and Trinity Episcopal Church
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH824
137 original wet plate glass negatives and some copy negatives
made for the production of cartes de visite, two or three
exposures per negative, 4x8", circa 1860-1865.
Presidents of the United States, members of Congress, religious
leaders, authors, artists, actors, etc. Included in this
series are Presidents Martin Van Buren and John Tyler; President
Lincoln's son and secretary of war Robert Lincoln; authors
Washington Irving and William Prescott; Adelina Patti, singer;
Charles Parsloe, actor; Chester Harding, artist; Maryland
Congressman Charles B. Calvert; and Charles Godfrey Gunther,
Mayor of New York.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH826
473 original wet plate negatives, 5x7" 1870-1880
Members of Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, military
and naval officers, and other notables. Included in this
series are portraits of Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford
B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield; James G. Blaine of Maine,
Alexander Stephens of Georgia, Oliver H. P. T. Morton of
Indiana, and James Proctor Knott of Kentucky; General Albert
J. Meyer, William B. Hazen, and Montgomery Meigs; and Admiral
John Worden.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH8266
25 original wet plate negatives, 5x7", two exposures
per plate, 1860-1870
Members of Congress, Union Army officers, and other notables.
Included are portraits of the Honorable Richard J. Haldeman
of Pennsylvania; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General; Governor
Rufus B. Bullock of Georgia; and Generals George H. Thomas
and Winfield S. Hancock.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH83
687 original wet plate negatives, 6 ½ x 8",
made between 1860-1875
Members of Congress, a few military and naval officers,
educators, and other notables. Included in this series are
portraits of William ("Parson") Brownlow, William
Pitt Fessenden, Charles Sumner, Jacob D. Cox, Salmon P. Chase,
Thomas Nast, Prince Iwakura of Japan, Edwin Booth, and generals
Joseph K. Barnes, Randolph B. Marcy, William T. Sherman,
and Horace Porter.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH832
1174 original wet plate negatives, 8 x 10", 1865-1880,
some plates have two exposures
Presidents of the United States and their families; members
of Congress, a number of former officers in the Union and
Confederate armies (not in uniform), military and naval officers,
Native American groups, justices of the Supreme Court, etc.
Included in this series are portraits of Presidents Ulysses
S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield's children
and Robert Lincoln; Justices John Marshall Harlan and Morrison
R. Waite; Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, Hamilton Fish of New
York, Robert B. Vance of North Carolina, John B. Henderson
of Missouri, and others; Generals Benjamin Alvord, Orlando
M. Poe, William T. Sherman, etc.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH833
47 original glass plate negatives, 8 x 10", 1890-1910
Presidents of the United States and other notables. Portraits
of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt; Mrs.
Theodore Roosevelt (Edith Kermit Carow); General Leonard
Wood (not in uniform); Admiral George Dewey; and others.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC- BH835
26 wet plate negatives, 8 x 10", 1860-1880
Views of Washington, D.C., and vicinity: Carroll Row from
the Capitol; Ford's Theater; Navy Department; War Department;
Patent Office (interior); Smithsonian Institution; Treasury
Department; White House (exterior and interior); House of
Representatives; Reform School, Bladensburg Road; Lee Mansion,
etc.
[retrieve
items from this group]
LC-BH8366
34 original glass plate negatives, 8 x 10", 1893
Military activities of various units; the District National
Guard at Camp McKibbin, Marshall Hall, Maryland; the 2nd,
3rd, and 6th Battalions. Some negatives by Washington, D.C.,
photographer William Cruikshank.
[retrieve
items from this group]
For preservation reasons, original negatives in the Brady-Handy
Collection are not used for producing photographic copies.
Digitizing was done at a high resolution and is sufficient
for most publication purposes. Users may download images themselves
or can order quality copies through the Library of Congress
Photoduplication Service. Use the LC-DIG number listed in the
Reproduction Number field. If more than one LC-DIG number is
listed, select preferred image.
As a publicly supported institution the Library generally
does not own rights to material in its collections. Therefore,
it does not charge permission fees for use of such material
and cannot give or deny permission to publish or otherwise
distribute material in its collections. Images in the Brady-Handy
collection are considered to be in the public domain. Credit
Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction
number, e.g., LC-DIG-cwpbh-01080]. Full rights and restrictions
information is available at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/389_bhan.html.
Related Collections at the Library
of Congress
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (P&P)
101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4730
-
Photographs of the Brady-Handy photographic studio, Washington,
D.C.
LOT 13436 7 gelatin silver prints made in 1954
Interior views of the Brady-Handy photographic
studio at 494 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. The
photographs show the storage conditions of the negatives
before the collection was purchased by the Library.
-
Other photographs from the Brady-Handy
Collection
Over the years, many negatives from the
Brady-Handy Collection have been printed
for the Prints and Photographs (P&P)
Division's files in the Reading Room. Duplicate
and copy negatives have not been scanned,
but photographs from some of these negatives
may be filed in P&P's reading room
files, such as the Biographical File.
Photographs by Levin C. Handy are included
in many LOTs and Filing Series in (P&P).
Some of the more significant groups are
described below:
Washington, D.C. Photographs
LOT 8894 Vintage prints of the Supreme Court Building and Southern
Railroad tracks near D.C.
Modern gelatin silver prints
from original glass plate negatives of
the Library of Congress, the old Senate
Chambers in the Capitol, and F Street,
NW.
Library of Congress Construction Photographs
Between 1880 and 1896 Levin C. Handy was hired by the Library to document
the construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building. He produced more than
900 glass plate negatives showing every phase of the construction process.
The photographs and negatives may be accessed through the following three
LOTS:
LOT 12042 62 cyanotype
and albumen panoramic photographs of the
construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building.
LOT 12335 albums (containing
717 cyanotype proofs) chronologically arranged
to show the construction of the Thomas
Jefferson Building.
LOT 12365 2 microfilm
reels of the 975 glass plate negatives
documenting the construction of the Thomas
Jefferson Building.
Library of Congress
LOT 4760 Interior and
exterior views of the Thomas Jefferson
Building. 33 mounted photographs showing
various reading rooms, book stacks, and
statuary produced shortly after the building
was constructed.
-
Civil War Photograph Collection
E. and H.T.
Anthony acquired
Brady's Civil
War negatives
as payment
for his debt
to that photographic
supply company.
These negatives,
distinguished
by the prefix
LC-B8, were
later
acquired by
the Library
in 1943 and
are known
as the Civil
War Photographs
Collection.
In the early
1990's a selection
of
the photographs
was made available
through the
Prints and
Photographs
Online Catalog.
The full set
of negatives,
as well as some prints, are
available
in the Prints
and Photographs
Online Catalog.
-
Books
Douglas, Howard Grey and Levin C. Handy. The
Library of Congress. Washington: Press
of B. S. Adams, 1900.
Call number: Z733.U58 L6 Copy 2 (P&P Case X)
Souvenir viewbook containing 38 halftone reproductions from photographs
by Mr. Howard Grey Douglas and Mr. Levin C. Handy. Plates include interior
and exterior views of the Thomas Jefferson Building with a particular
emphasis on the mosaics, paintings, and sculpture adorning the building.
Brief text accompanies the plates.
-
Newspaper Clippings
Newspaper clippings arranged in an album
primarily concerned with a court case in
1909 involving Civil War negatives made
by the Brady Studio. One article provides
genealogical information about the Handy
family.
Call number: LOT 7467
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division
101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington DC 20540-4683
9 letters written to Handy regarding requests for photographs
or services from his photography business. Two of the letters,
written in September and October of 1895, from Mathew Brady
request Handy's help with a lecture Brady is preparing.
Call number: Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection--Levin
C. Handy
Library of Congress, Rare Book Division
101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington DC 20540-4683
The Library of Congress, Architecture and Mural Decorations;
Pictures from Photographs. Washington: Foster & Reynolds,
1900.
Leather bound publication with gold leaf decorations. 35 half-tone illustrations
from photographs by Howard Grey Douglas and Levin C. Handy. Plates include
interior and exterior views of the Thomas Jefferson Building with a particular
emphasis on the mosaics, paintings, and sculpture adorning the building.
Brief text describing the building's murals and sculpture.
Call number: Z733.U58 L4
New-York Historical Society, Department of Prints, Photographs,
and Architectural Collections
2 West 77th Street, New York, NY 10024
(212) 873-3400
The collection includes approximately 600 large "Imperial" portraits
(approximately 22 x 17 inches) and 5,300 cartes de visite
from the Brady Studio.
New York Public Library, Photography Collection, Miriam & Ira
D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York 10018-2788
(212) 930-0830
Handy, Levin C. [Photographs of the Library of Congress.]
Washington: 189-?
1 library-produced album, consisting of 24 silver gelatin mounted photographs
of the Library of Congress. Views include: bird's-eye three-quarter facade,
entrance stairs, exterior sculpture, and interiors of the building erected
in 1897.
Various Locations
Handy, Levin C. United States National Military Cemetery,
Arlington, Virginia. Washington: Levin C. Handy, 1903.
Souvenir viewbook containing 38 halftone plates with accompanying
text. Illustrations include Officer's Section, Private's
Section, Confederate Section, Arlington Mansion, the Meigs
Sarcophagus, Tomb of the Unknown Dead, the Connecticut Monument,
Burial of Maine's Dead, and View of Washington, D.C., from
Arlington.
This pamphlet is rare and is available only at: University
of California at Santa Barbara, Detroit Public Library, New
York Public Library, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
(Freemont, Ohio), University of Texas at Austin, The Library
of Virginia (Richmond), and George Washington University
(Washington, DC).
Collins, Kathleen. "Mathew B. Brady" and "Brady-Handy
Collections." In Washingtoniana Photographs: Collections
in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
Washington: Library of Congress, 1989: 24-31.
Milhollen, Hirst D. "The Brady-Handy Collection." In A
Century of Photographs: Selected Photographs from the Library
of Congress, compiled by Renata V. Shaw. Washington:
Library of Congress, 1980: 38-50.
Prepared by: Carol Johnson, Curator. Last updated:
July 2003.
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