Series I: Imperial Format Portraits

Series I contains 580 salted paper and albumen prints made from Imperial format negatives taken between the mid-1850s and the early 1860s. They are portrait fragments, primarily heads and half-length views either cropped from full portraits or printed on scraps of partially sensitized photographic paper; a very few full-length portraits are included. The prints range in size from 2 by 3 inches to 16 by 12 inches. The names of the sitters are inscribed on many of the photographs in the lightest section, usually a shirtfront, forehead, or picture margin. Identified people in Series I include prominent New York politicians, judges, and civic leaders, internationally known American and foreign businessmen and clergymen, leading cultural figures, and foreign diplomats. There are twenty-two portraits of children in this format.

The portraits are arranged alphabetically by sitter name; fifty of the sitters have no identification and are grouped together by gender, with children filed separately. Several of these portraits have variant spellings, illegible writing or variant names written on a single image. In those cases, the portrait is alphabetized by a selected name and both names/spellings are shown in the portrait list. Numbers following names indicate multiple photographs of either an individual or of images of several sitters with the same surname.

A third format in the collection is the "oversized carte-de-visite." There are fourteen portraits and one landscape in this format, each measuring approximately 3.75 x 5.5 inches. These portraits are housed in Box 3, after the Imperial Format Portraits.