1840s Daguerreotype Is Sold for $62,500

Sotheby's daguerreotypeSotheby’s This daguerreotype, showing a country home along “a continuation of Broadway,” was likely taken in New York City, in October 1848 or earlier. It sold for $62,500 at a Sotheby’s auction.

Updated, 5:42 p.m. | A photo believed to be one of the oldest ever taken in New York City was sold on Monday at Sotheby’s for $62,500 to a buyer who submitted the winning bid by phone, the auction house said. The pre-auction sales estimate was $50,000 to $70,000.

The winners were Billy and Jennifer Frist of Nashville. “It’s a very unique, historically significant daguerreotype,” said Mr. Frist, who has been collecting photos since 1993 and is a nephew of Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican and former Senate majority leader.

The picture, believed to date from October 1848 or earlier, shows a white house on a hill with a white picket fence, next to what is believed to be the old Bloomingdale Road, the continuation of Broadway, in what is now the Upper West Side.

The photo was discovered at a small New England auction, and the date and location of the image were taken from a note that was folded and placed behind the daguerreotype plate in its original leather case. The note — misspelling the word “magnifying,” among other irregularities — is written in a neat, cursive hand, in dark ink on pale blue paper:

This view, was taken at too great a distance, & from ground 60 or 70 feet lower than the building; rendering the lower Story of the House, & the front Portico entirely invisible. (the handsomest part of the House.) The main road, passes between the two Post & rail fences. (called, a continuation of Broadway 60 feet wide.) It requires a maganifying glass, to clearly distinguish the Evergreens, within the circular enclosure, taken the last of October, when nearly half of the leaves were off the trees.

May 1849. L. B.

“It took a tremendous amount of research to establish where it was,” said Denise Bethel, director of the photography department at Sotheby’s New York. “The clue is the phrase ‘a continuation of Broadway.’ The owner thought the phrase ‘continuation of Broadway’ might indicate it was New York City. That was his best guess. We fanned out and did a lot of research to back him up.”

Bloomingdale Road, often referred to as “continuation of Broadway” in the city directories of the day, was one of two main roads that ran up and down the island in the 1700s. The other was Old Boston Road, which is where Park Avenue is now. Bloomingdale Road was named for the Bloemendael area, now the Upper West Side, and cut through hilly terrain in Midtown and Upper Manhattan, from Union Place to Manhattanville. (The road name survived as the name of a restaurant, recently closed, at West 88th and Broadway.)

The photo, whose creator is unknown, is unusual because it shows a bucolic scene at a time when daguerreotypes were still an experimental technology. Daguerreotypes, each of which is an in-camera positive image on a polished silvered metal plate, were very popular in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. They were generally indoor portraits due to the fickleness of weather and outdoor conditions. Early known daguerreotypes of New York City are rare, and those that exist usually focus on the urban setting of buildings in Lower Manhattan, such as Chatham Street (now Park Place) and City Hall Park.

“There were so many studios in Manhattan, it has always been a mystery why we don’t have more outdoor daguerreotypes of New York City,” Ms. Bethel said. She said she suspected that such outdoor photos were made but that over time their identifying information was lost.

“If we did not have this note, we would simply not know it was New York City,” she said.

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What a great picture! It’s hard to imagine the UWS ever looked like that. The owner of the house could never have anticipated The Dakota popping up just 40 years later.

Wow, this wonderful image demonstrates the power of photography. What have we created in 160 years? There are losses and gains. DMC

A fascinating detail: the enormous white picket fence.

Imagine how many man hours it took to keep that fence painted. Obviously not a problem in the 1840’s.

By the way, my guess is that the fence is around a paddock, not a “lawn” as mentioned in a previous article. These folks needed horses to get downtown.

This story made front page of Drudge today, Jennifer. WIth liink and photo. Nice.

Is there any more substantiating evidence identifying the location? Many photos from that period are noted at a later date and memory is often not correct. We’re still talking 19th century notings, so ink and paper would be consistent with the time period. Where exactly did this photo come from; who’s estate? Is there a portrait of this house somewhere else, either family (private) collection or the New York Historical Society? A deed, tax maps? NY Times can you give us a bit more?

My father, we believe, recognized the house in this picture right away. He is trying to confirm, through family records, that the house is indeed what he thinks it to be.

I’ll post more later once I hear back from him.

Wonderful! I just was browsing the Library of Congress and found a similar house, trees, firs as mentioned and same season with a different, closer perspective.
hope the url works:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?dag:1:./temp/~ammem_UUXT::displayType=1:m856sd=cph:m856sf=3d01983:@@@

Have what I believe to be 38 pages of what went on at BLOOMINGDALE FARM…..also a picture of the house taken at a different angle and up close…caption under the photo of the house reads as follows: BLOOMINGDALE FARM..underneath are the following words……Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street….under these words are: The Country Home of John Taylor …..book on Taylor was written by my GreatGrandmother Emily Johnston deForest.
My so Allen Hill posted at 9:31AM today

While I can’t argue with the historical relevance of this photo (it should be in a New York museum) I nonetheless had this populist reaction:

The nephew of Bill Frist paid $62,500 for a photograph in the middle of a deep recession???!!! Yeah, I don’t hate the rich.

Eat the rich!

Thank you to the Hill’s for their updates, hope someday to read the history if it all works out.

TH —

For several reasons, I don’t think it’s Bloomingdale Farm. First, it looks as if the chimneys are on the side of the house; at BF, they appear to have come up through the core of the house. Second, the proportions look wrong relative to the picture in EJdF’s book. Third, there is no visible indications of the pilasters that separated the windows on BF — though the picture is somewhat obscure on this point, Fourth, there’s no indication of a hipped roof in the existing photo of BF. Lastly, if it *is* BF, then the picture must have been taken not from Broadway but from the rear of the property to the west, where there was a large vegetable garden and a pond. Perhaps the fence here enclosed a garden at some point, and it does look as if there’s a pond there. (I have to defer to someone else on whether the ground sloped away like that behind BF.)

I would very much like to be wrong, but then I would feel stupid, too, for not trying to buy the picture.

Do you have any other pictures or descriptions of the property (beyond what’s in the book)?

I have the same history book “John Taylor, A Scottish Merchant of Glasgow and New York, 1752-1833″ written by De Forest in 1917. John Taylor is our fifth great-grandfather(going back 5 generations) This book was given to my grandfather.
The picture of the front of Bloomingdale Farm, in our book, resembles a plantation style home with “two-storey-high” grand columns in front, surrounded by many tall trees.
“On October 16, 1796 John Taylor bought a farm out in the country from the estate of Samuel Nicoll. This farm faced on the Bloomingdale Road(Broadway) and had a rear entrance on the Bowery Road(Middle Road), which ran parallel with the Bloomingdale Road midway between the streets afterwards laid out and called Fifth and Madison Avenues. Bloomingdale Farm was as long as two crosstown blocks and on Fifth Avenue extended from 39th Street to 40th Street, a plot about two hundred and twenty-seven feet wide. It contained nearly ten acres and for it John Taylor paid 1575 lbs.? The map of the property shows that it was just south of the land where the Public Library now stands. Here the Taylor children had a glorious time.”
“It was a long way from the city, about four miles from Wall Street” where Margaret Scott and John Taylor lived at 225 Queen St..
Bloomingdale Farms was sold in 1834, because none of the children wanted it!
I do not think this is the same building as in our book.

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