Series VIII. Visual Material and Audio Tapes (1830s-1995)

The subseries includes various visual materials originally housed together in the collection; some removed from other series; oversized items; items originally displayed at the Brown Brothers Harriman offices or in exhibitions organized by the Historical Files; and images rehoused in two groups in 1995.

These include originals of images reproduced in two histories of the firm: Alexander Brown (Partners in Banking, p. 25), William Brown (p. 26), Jay Robinson's sketches of contemporary Liverpool (pp. 27 and 102); and the Liverpool offices of Brown Shipley & Co. (100 Years of Merchant Banking, p. 107).

The unmounted paper stereographs removed from Volume 36 (see Arrangement Note) include two images: one of a European party seated in front of large tents pitched in a dry climate and behind their local guides (four versions in varying degrees of exposure), and one of six such guides in front of the same tents (three versions in varying degrees of exposure). No studio, photographer, or location is identified, but they would appear to have been taken in the Middle East, and using two cameras rather than a camera with two lenses, based on the blurring in one side of one of the images.

The glass plate negatives of John Crosby Brown's New Jersey home, Brighthurst, were donated to the Historical Files in 1966 by his grandson John Crosby Brown Moore.

The black and white photographs by Guy Gillette and Matar Studios were commissioned for use in the second edition of the brochure "Personality of a Bank", issued in 1967. The firm's first promotional publication, it was originally issued in 1959. Further information about the publication, including additional prints, is included in the "1959" files in Subseries I.A. Chronological Files.

Some images from the 1968 sesquicentennial celebrations (provided by the Union Pacific Railroad) in Seattle and Sun Valley were reproduced in personalized leather-bound scrapbooks presented to each guest. The book presented to Juan Trippe, who as president of Pan American World Airways was instrumental in inspiring Boeing to create the 747 jetliner, is item 109 in the Print Room's album collection at New-York Historical Society.

Some snapshots from the Sun Valley events were contributed to the Historical Files by Alice B. Brown, wife of partner Moreau Delano Brown; others were taken by Malcolm Freudy of Freudy Photos, New York City.

The 1995 materials consist of two groups (marked A and B) of images originally from the Historical Files and from the Walker Evans portfolio (see Subseries VIII.B.), which were rehoused separately from the other visual materials in 1995. No explanation for this is provided in the Collection. Image A12 is now included in the oversize materials.

The vast preponderance of visual materials in the Collection can be found in Subseries I.A. and Subseries I.B., arranged either chronologically or by subject, respectively.

As part of the firm's 150th anniversary celebrations in September, 1968, it hosted a multiday excursion to Sun Valley, Idaho (developed as a ski resort in the 1930s by the Harriman interests), for clients and guests who included American industrialists and overseas bankers, but no American commercial bankers. It began in Seattle, Washington, with dinner one evening at the Space Needle and the next at the home of Boeing's president William Allen, after guests had had a tour of the Boeing facility where the first 747 jetliner was being constructed. From Seattle, guests boarded two Union Pacific trains for the trip overland to Shoshone, Idaho, and traveled thence by bus to Sun Valley for two days of seminars, social events, and leisure activities.

A celebration for staff, families, and guests was held in New York on October 9, 1968. It began with an Open House at the firm's headquarters at 59 Wall Street and continued at a re-creation of the 1818 New York waterfront on pier 13 at the foot of Wall Street. It featured food, drinks, and entertainment of the period, with catering by Restaurant Associates. Among the guests was New York Mayor John V. Lindsay.

The five glass plate negatives showing rooms at John Crosby Brown's New Jersey home, Brighthurst; the two framed portraits of Montagu Norman; and the view of James Brown's house at 9th Street and University Place were removed from Subseries I.C.vi. Partners. They are housed separately from the other materials in this subseries because of their size and fragility.

The stereograph images were found loose in John Crosby Brown's 1859-1860 scrapbook of pressed plants and flowers (Subseries V.B. Partners. John Crosby Brown, volume 36).

The prints, contacts, and negatives by photographer Guy Gillette and by Matar Studios were originally housed with materials included in Subseries VIII.B. Walker Evans Portfolio, and have been moved here for consistency.

The subseries includes black and white prints, negatives, contact sheets, captions, correspondence, and ephemera related to Walker Evans's portfolio of photographs commissioned for publication as the conclusion of Partners in Banking.

Partners in Banking was designed as an image-heavy history of the firm. However, because much of the company's evolution after 1945 did not provide extensive graphic material, Kouwenhoven decided to end the book with a commissioned photographic portfolio depicting the contemporary organization, its partners, and locations.

For this he chose photographer Walker Evans, who was ending his career as Special Photographic Editor at Fortune Magazine. During his tenure there from 1945 to 1964, Evans had completed numerous self-assigned photographic studies of the contemporary business environment, its practitioners and tools. He brought to these the same eye for detail and sociological import that had informed his best-known and most provocative images: those documenting rural poverty for the Resettlement (later, Farm Security) Administration during the Depression, and his photographs of Greensboro, Alabama, farming families originally published, with James Agee, as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in 1941.

The Brown Brothers Harriman portfolio may be the last that Evans made as a corporate documenter, and only 56 of the close to 300 images he made for the project were published in Partners in Banking. In 1965 he was named Professor of Photography on the Faculty for Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. Before his death in 1975, Evans experimented with the new instant Polaroid SX-70 camera and lectured and published on his collections of vernacular images, including an extensive postcard collection.

The subseries is organized in three sections:

Subseries VIII.B.i. Correspondence and notes

Subseries VIII.B.ii. Prints and captions

Subseries VIII.B.iii. Contact sheets and negatives

The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the Walker Evans Archive, which includes negatives and contacts of some of these images, and a small amount of related correspondence. It is the copyright owner of all images produced by Evans, including those in the Brown Brothers Harriman Collection.

The subseries consists of two audio tapes found in the collection and an empty take-up reel. The 3 inch diameter tape was previously unhoused; the 7 inch diameter tape was removed from W. Averell Harriman's files in Subseries I.C.vi. Partners.