Library Company of Philadelphia
The Stevens-Cogdell/Sanders-Venning Collection contains several 19th- and 20th-century portrait photographs of members of the extended Black families descended from the relationship of Richard Codgell, South Carolina merchant and enslaver, and Sarah Sanders, an enslaved woman in his household. The portraits embody an anti-racist, counter archive to contemporaneous collections of racist imagery and caricatures.
Probably a Black family member or friend took this snapshot in the backyard of the residence of Miranda Cogdell Venning, granddaughter of Sarah Sanders. There is both a formalness and candidness to the sitters’ mannerisms in this image taken at the family home. Miranda, probably the woman seated on the hammock, was the first African American graduate of the Philadelphia Girls High School and Normal School. A school principal, she died of tuberculosis one year after this view was taken. She was thirty-eight years old.
M. C. V., June 1899, Venning’s Yard, [1116 Fitzwater Street]. Cyanotype. Stevens-Cogdell/Sanders-Venning Collection.
The acquisition of 151 watercolor views of Philadelphia by Benjamin R. Evans was the first significant acquisition by the Graphic Arts Department.
Commissioned by antiquarian Ferdinand Dreer, Evans created many drawings on site and based others on photographs or earlier artwork. Evans’s views focused on small shops and modest buildings, like Enoch’s Variety Theatre, rather than city landmarks and portrayed a world far neater and homogeneous than the actual city.
Benjamin Ridgway Evans, East Side of Seventh Below Arch, 1883. Watercolor. Purchase 1975.
Traffic might be a mess, but at least the sunset is nice!
Market Street, East of Sixth Street, early 1900s.
“A token of love from me, to thee.”
We’re celebrating Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882), whose birthday was yesterday, on this #floralFriday. Sarah was an artist, an activist, an educator, and a prominent Quaker member of the Philadelphia African-American elite community.
Her paintings in the Amy Matilda Cassey friendship album (ca. 1833) are considered the earliest surviving signed artworks by an African-American woman.
We’re putting on our party hats for another #ArchivesHashtagParty! An #archivestipofthehat to you! Which one is your favorite?
Charles Oakford’s 1848 & 49 fashions for hats, caps & furs, wholesale & retail establishment. Philadelphia: P.S. Duval Lith., [1848]
Learned canary birds perform the most astonishing feats!
We would especially like to see Grandpapa standing on his head, and Grandma sitting in her chair.
Sig'r Blitz, the stage name for Antonio van Zandt, was a British ventriloquist and magician who moved to Philadelphia in 1834. During the Civil War, Blitz performed what he estimated to be 132 shows to 63,000 soldiers recuperating at various Civil War hospitals in Philadelphia.
This is a broadside playbill from a benefit show in 1863. Sig. Blitz, The Great Magician and Ventriloquist with his Learned Canary Birds, (Philadelphia, 1863).
This stereograph view shows the crowds visiting the Centennial International Exposition on July 4, 1876. Stagecoaches, horses, and pedestrians make their way down Elm Avenue (now Parkside Ave), with the Main Exhibition Building stretching along the entire length of the background. At the time, the Main Exhibition Building was the largest building in the world.
Of the 200 structures that were built in Fairmount Park for the Centennial Exhibition, only four remain, including Memorial Hall (the Art Gallery), now home to the Please Touch Museum. The Main Building was demolished in 1881.
In antebellum Philadelphia riots were endemic, sometimes connected to protest, but mostly they were simply riots. The rioters were all white, and their victims were mostly free Blacks, making these riots a significant expansion of the systemic violence against Black people in America that has continued almost without a break for hundreds of years.
The most famous riot of the period was the burning of Pennsylvania Hall on May 17, 1838. The hall had just been built by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society as a venue for their public meetings, a “temple of free discussion” of antislavery, women’s rights, temperance, and other reforms. Four days after it opened it was torched by a mob, said to have been organized by a group of “gentlemen from a certain section of the country.” What angered the rioters was not only what the speakers said but also the fact that so many of them were women and African Americans, and that Blacks and whites sat together in the audience without separation. The police made no effort to intervene, and the several fire companies that converged on the site refused to fight the fire, instead pointing their hoses at the houses around the hall. In the days that followed rioters also torched the Friends Shelter for Colored Children and damaged the AME Mother Bethel Church.
More about protest, riots, Robert Purvis, California House, Frank Webb’s “The Garies,” and more on the latest Pandemic Reading from Librarian Jim Green. Now up on the blog at www.librarycompany.org/news
Image 1: J.C. Wild, Pennsylvania Hall, hand-colored lithograph (Philadelphia, 1838).
Image 2: J.C. Wild, Destruction by Fire of Pennsylvania Hall, hand-colored lithograph (Philadelphia, 1838).
We’re 289 years young today!
In 1731, Benjamin Franklin convinced members of the Junto, his “society of mutual improvement,” to pool their resources and purchase a collection of books none could have afforded individually. The Articles of Agreement pictured here were drafted on July 1, 1731, and the Library Company of Philadelphia was established when 50 founding shareholders signed on, each contributing 40 shillings.
Articles of Association. (Philadelphia, July 1, 1731). Manuscript on vellum.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, there’s still time to register for our upcoming seminar, Victorian Sweets: Exoticism & Agrarianism in Local Confectionery!
Using 19th-century advertisements, photos, packaging, and broadsides from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s rich collections, experts from The Franklin Fountain & Shane Confectionery will explore the written & visual culture of the 19th-century confectionery trades.
And yes, there will be dessert.