Elmira history: Story behind 19th century photo of East Avenue

May 07, 2023

I added a new photo to my collection this week. A wonderful old albumen stereograph of East Avenue looking toward Elmira. Many of you know that albumen photos are my favorites. Why? Because they are usually in bad condition – always faded and hard to see, easily scratched, covered with ancient fingerprints, cracks, fissures, etc. I’ve been working with them since the late 1990s.

The first ever albumen print was made in 1847. My oldest ones go back to Elmira in the 1860s when our local photographers snapped street scenes.

Albumen prints were the most common type of photographic prints in the 1800s. They have a smooth and shiny surface due to using egg whites as a paper coating. Albumen prints tend to fade quickly due to their chemical reactions. The contrast is almost gone, and they are yellowed. The cracks and fissures come from the shrinking of the albumin. Albumens were popular until around 1895, when newer techniques became available for photographers.

I keep my old photos in a special container and protect them from light, temperature and humidity. I never clean them physically, but I scan them at a very high resolution and then futz with the contrast to find some lost details.

So, I found this photo of East Avenue and assumed it was from the 1870s. The back of the image says, "F. T. Martin East Avenue." Usually, Elmira photographers had addresses downtown on Lake or Water street. This card states his address as 962 East Avenue – a red flag for me. So, I checked the city directories, and Martin did not live there in the 1860s or the 1870s. He and his family did live there in the 1880s, which made my photo 10 years younger than I expected. Martin held out with the albumen technique much longer than others.

So I made a digital copy of the photo, raised the resolution, de-colored it, adjusted the contrast, and zoomed in to see what details were available.

I got out my 1896 map to see what I was looking at. On the right is a fence with an opening – what was Prospect Street. James and Harriet Morehouse lived on the far right; the Beach estate is just beyond it. A creek is coming down from East Hill on the left side of the road. Left of the creek is a smaller road so neighbors could get to their houses. A few houses have their own little bridges across the creek.

At nearly the halfway point is a bridge with some people on it. I Googled the address on the back of the card, and sure enough, the Martin family lived in the corner house just to the left of where they were standing. Hmm, it took me a few minutes to determine their significance.

There are five people in the photo, and there were five people in Martin's family listed in 1900 – Fred or F.T., Jennie, his wife, and three teenage children, William, Abbie, and Gilmore. The children in the photo are smaller, so if I subtract a few years of growth, this photo is circa 1882.

So, now my question is, who took the photo? Would it have been possible in that year to run a cable/shutter release to a distance of about five houses to snap that photo of the family? My local photographer experts say No. Someone else snapped the photo. Maybe a neighbor or family member. I may never know.

Diane Janowski is the Elmira city historian. Her column appears monthly.