Tag Archives: Boston MA

Spotlight On…Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Negatives

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Salem, 128 Essex Street, interior detail, east parlor, mantel, Joseph Gardner House, from the Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives
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Salem, 122 Washington Street, exterior detail, doorway, Peabody Building ,from the Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives
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From Frank Cousins Bee Hive, Salem, from the 19th Century American Trade Cards Collection at Boston Public Library
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Salem, Corner of Essex and Washington Street, showing horse-cars, from the Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Anne Berard, Reference & Outreach Services Librarian, Milford Town Library

The Frank Cousins Glass Plate Photography Collection, containing over 2500 images, became accessible via the Digital Commonwealth in June. Simply put, it is incredible.

Frank Cousins (1851-1925), a merchant and architectural photographer captured streets and buildings of Salem, Boston and Baltimore. He reserved his most intimate building and street views for “The Witch City”, Salem, his hometown. Cousins operated a dry goods shop on Essex Street, called the Bee Hive and he was an integral part of the community. Ever the entrepreneur, he also sold prints and folios in the store.He photographed facades, doorways, stairwells, fireplaces, and other building details and left behind an impressive body of work including  the only known images of some structures lost in the Salem fire of 1914. Cousins’ reputation and reach grew with the 1912 publication of Colonial Architecture, Series I, Fifty Salem Doorways.

The collection comes from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. Meaghan Wright, Assistant Reference & Access Services Librarian and her colleagues spent months transcribing information for inclusion in the the metadata so valuable to researchers. The library also hired a digital projects initiative consultant, Jacqueline Ford Dearborn, to review plates with a lightbox and conduct a full rehousing project for the negatives.” The plates then traveled to the Boston Public Library’s Digitization Lab where their cameras brought the glass plate negatives to their new digital life we can now all access and enjoy. One of Meaghan’s favorite Cousins’ images shown above is the corner of Essex and Washington Streets. The Phillips staff is thrilled to have Cousins’ collection widely available, as their prints were previously for in-library use only.

Another of the Phillips Library collections of glass negatives, the Herman Parker Collection also became available in June. Nowhere near as encyclopedic as Cousins’ it takes us to the water. We’ll visit  that collection in a future Spotlight On… post.

 

Grove Hall Memory Project

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This post was written by Patricia Feeley, BPL Collaborative Services Librarian.

Catherine Louise Brown and Mildred Brown, Keitha's maternal aunts, and Henrietta "Yetta" Brown (later Burke), Keitha's mother
Catherine Louise Brown and Mildred Brown, Keitha’s maternal aunts, and Henrietta “Yetta” Brown (later Burke), Keitha’s mother” c. 1927-1929. From the Grove Hall Memory Project

 

When the Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library began planning the Grove Hall Memory Project, it was their intention to make it available in a digital format.  Katrina Morse, now the Parker Hill Branch librarian and the driving force behind the Memory Project, wanted “anyone…anywhere in the world” to be able to access the materials.

The Memory Project’s goal was to provide audio/visual “snapshots” of the neighborhood through the years as reported by the people who lived there.  The collection includes letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and oral-history interviews with full transcriptions.   For Katrina, the interviews are the most interesting and valuable part of the collection.  You can listen to and/or read the transcripts of these interviews on Digital Commonwealth.

After the Memory Project collection was added to the Digital Commonwealth, Katrina reports that another branch librarian approached her about doing a similar project for her branch.  While Katrina says the project was incredibly time-consuming, she thinks it was worthwhile and is very pleased that Digital Commonwealth offers the collection a platform making it accessible to Grove Hall residents, former residents, and anyone interested in the history of a vital, ever-changing Boston  neighborhood “anywhere in the world.”