Trowbridge & Beals collection

COLLECTION NO.:

9-

SIZE:

51 photographs (0.4 cu. ft.)

COLLECTION DATES:

ca. 1923-1936

PROVENANCE:

Robert J. Work, 1971; Ball State University Architecture Library, ca. 1978

RESTRICTIONS:

None

FINDING AIDS:

Illustrated inventory (PDF)

DIGITAL COLLECTION:

Selected images from the collection have been digitized and are available on CD or in  PDF format.

Biographical Sketches | Scope and Content |  Illustrated Inventory

Biographical Sketches

Raymond W. Trowbridge

Raymond W. Trowbridge (1886-December 1936) was an architect prior to his arrival in Chicago in 1908, and he practiced as an architect in Chicago until 1923.  A debilitating health problem of uncertain nature (perhaps scoliosis) forced him to stop practicing architecture and to turn instead to photography, previously a hobby, as a means of livelihood.  His photographic commissions came from architects and their clients.  He was single when he died and had no heirs.  Hedrich-Blessing, architectural photographers, purchased the glass negatives from his estate.  Hedrich-Blessing later gave the plates to the Chicago Historical Society.

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) is regarded as the first woman press photographer.  A schoolteacher originally, she became a full-time photographer around 1900.  She was hired as a news photographer by the Buffalo Inquirer and Courier in 1902 and was official photographer for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.  She lived and worked in New York City between 1905 and 1928, becoming well known.  Her photographs on a wide variety of subjects were published in magazines such as Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's Bazaar, and Town and Country.  In 1928 she moved to California, then back to New York after the stock market crashed.  Looking for a source of income in Chicago in 1932 or 1933, she "latched onto the architects who thought her a dream girl for the way she photographed their beloved houses."  By 1936 she was again in New York, where she continued to work until her death.  Her works are in many major photographic collections in the United States, including the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College.  Several art galleries carry her work for sale.

Walcott & Work

Russell S. Walcott, a Chicago native, studied at Princeton University and overseas.  He practiced architecture independently in Chicago in the 1920s.  Several of his designs for houses in the northern suburbs of Chicago were published between 1923 and 1927 in American Architect and Architectural Record magazines.  Robert Work was associated with architect David Adler from 1917 to 1928.  Walcott and Work teamed up some time thereafter and remained partners until 1936, when Walcott moved to Tryon, NC.  Work continued to practice in Chicago. 

Sources:

"House of Russell S. Walcott, Winnetka, Ill.," American Architect 126 no. 2455 (24 September 1924): plates 109, 110.

"The Residence of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Ettlinger near Cary, Illinois, Country Life (New York) 70 (October 1936): 42-43.

"Planned for a Lot: the Home of Mr. Arthur Wheeler, in Sterling, Illinois…," House & Garden 73 (January 1938): 53.

"House Beautiful's Thirteen Annual Small House Competition," House Beautiful 83, no. 2 (February 1941): 29.

Alexander Alland, Jessie Tarbox Beals, First Woman News Photographer (New York, 1978).

"Beals, Jessie Tarbox. Photographs, 1896-1941: A Finding Aid," Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, 1988, <http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/sch00047.html>.

Eileen Flanagan, Prints and Photographs Division, Chicago Historical Society, orally, 16 May 1996.

Andrew R. Seager
19 May 2004

Scope and Content

The collection consists of 51 photographs of fashionable suburban houses in northern Illinois and Wisconsin taken between about 1923 and 1936 by Raymond W. Trowbridge, Jessie Tarbox Beals, and an unidentified photographer.  Twenty-one or 22 houses are depicted, all of them recently constructed.  Many (perhaps all) were designed by architects Russell S. Walcott, Robert Work, and the firm Walcott & Work.  The houses whose locations are known are in Winnetka, Evanston, Lake Forest, Cary, and Sterling, Illinois, and Fish Creek, Wisconsin.

Thirty-five of the photographs were taken by Trowbridge, fifteen by Beals, and one by the unidentified photographer.  All but one are sepia-toned prints matted or mounted on boards.  The images range in size from 6" x 9" to 9.5" x 12.5".   The boards are 12" x 16" or smaller.

The mats for most of the Trowbridge photographs bear his mark (his name in red letters on a black rectangle), stamped below the right margin of the print.  On one set of photos, which are mounted rather than matted, the back bears a stamped name and address: "Trowbridge, 737 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Illinois."  Beals either signed the mounts or printed her mark in pencil, on the front.  The backs are stamped, "Jessie Tarbox Beals, Chicago, Ill." in most cases, or occasionally "Jessie Tarbox Beals, Hotel Allerton, Chicago, Ill."

RELATED HOLDINGS:

The Prints and Photographs Division of the Chicago Historical Society holds Trowbridge's glass plate negatives and a list of his clients. 

Major collections of Beals's photographic prints and negatives are at the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College.  The Schlesinger Library also holds a collection of Beals's papers.  Most of the house and garden photos acquired by the Schlesinger Library were given to the Frances Loeb Library of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Inventory

9-2 / bx

[Houses in the Chicago vicinity]. / [ca. 1934-1936].

Description of Material:

A. [Exterior & interior views] / Jessie Tarbox Beals; [ca. 1934-1936]. -- 15 photos mounted on boards; b&w; 12 x 16 in. or smaller in box, 13 x 17 x 3 in

Notes:

Includes photos of 8 houses, among them a house for architect Russell Walcott.  See box list for itemization.

Added Entries:

Beals, Jessie Tarbox

Walcott, Russell S.

9-1 / bx

     
[Houses in the Chicago vicinity].   / [Walcott and Work, Robert Work], ca. 1923-1936.

Description of Material:

A. [Exterior and interior views] / Trowbridge; [ca. 1923-1936]. -- 35 photos mounted on boards: b&w; 12 x 16 in. or smaller in box, 13 x 17 x 3 in.

Notes:

Includes photos of 13 houses.  See box list for itemization.

Added Entries:

Trowbridge, Raymond W.

Walcott & Work

Work, Robert 

9-3 / bx

Gallagher [house].   / [Architect unknown], ca. 1930.

Description of Material:

A. [Interior view] / [photographer unknown; ca. 1930]. -- 1 photo: b&w; 11 x 14 in. in box, 13 x 17 x 3 in.