I love to look at old photographs. Images that capture a bygone moment in time – even if I don’t know who is in the photo. It’s fun to play detective, trying to identify long-gone buildings or seeing local scenes the way they used to look.
The Facebook group Old Photos of Cincinnati is a great source for these.
The Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
has dozens of collections of photographs, maps and artifacts in its Digital Library online. Like the “Birds of America” plates and the Cincinnati Enquirer Photo Archive.I was intrigued by the collection marked “Cincinnati Camera Club,” which has amateur photographic lantern slides taken in the 1800s.
What did those early photographers capture? Everyday snapshots of people on a picnic, swimming
or climbing trees, old houses, livestock, lush forests, beaches and architectural details of European cathedrals. Well, everyday photos of people with money, apparently.
Intrigued, I went looking for more about this club.
The Cincinnati Camera Club was one of the oldest photography clubs in the country. According to “The American Annual of Photography and Photographic Times Almanac for 1890,” it was founded Jan. 24, 1884, and met at 108 Broadway on the first and third Monday nights of the month. They also had an annual outing on Decoration Day (the old name for Memorial Day), and had regular lantern slide exhibitions at local theaters. In 1890, there were 128 active members.
A description of club activities: “Original papers were read, scientific demonstrations had, new processes explained, the latest apparatus and appliances experimented with, and discussions upon photographic subjects provided, all of which are especially interesting and of great benefit to members.”
Amateur photography was really taking off in the 1880s. George Eastman’s mass-produced Kodak handheld box camera would be released in 1888, selling for $25 (about $880 today), democratizing consumer photography. Before Kodak, camera equipment was made for the professional and expensive – about $100 ($3,400 today).
The Enquirer reported on the Cincinnati club’s annual exhibition in 1887, featuring pictures taken by the members. The photos were displayed on canvas hanging in a dark hall at the Odeon theater inside the College of Music, next door to Music Hall.
Among the members whose work was shown: businessman George Bullock, the club president; famed artist Henry Farny; Judge Nicholas Longworth II; Joseph Longworth Nichols, son of Rookwood Pottery founder Maria Longworth Nichols; George McLaughlin, brother of architect James W. McLaughlin; Dr. Arthur LeBoutillier, a surgeon and artist; and John Longworth Stettinius, who was raised by his grandfather, the philanthropist and winemaker Nicholas Longworth.
Historic photos found among junk
In 1967, The Pictorial Enquirer ran a feature about a collection of photographs taken by a member of the Cincinnati Camera Club.
The story reports Ted Langstroth, a retired businessman and local history enthusiast, had purchased a few hundred wet plate slides from a junk dealer. According to the markings, the photos were taken by Stettinius in the 1880s.
Langstroth identified many members of the Longworth family in the photos.
There were young siblings Nick and Clara sitting by a pond. That would be Nicholas Longworth III, the future speaker of the House and husband to Alice Roosevelt, and Clara Longworth de Chambrun, countess.
The Longworth family, including Maria Longworth Nichols, sitting atop a four-horse carriage.
Young people – possibly grandchildren of the first Nicholas Longworth – at a picnic.
A rare photo of Joseph Longworth, who sold the land for Eden Park, looking rustic with a long white beard, working in his barn.
Langstroth then donated the collection of lantern slides to the Cincinnati public library. It turns out those were the very photos that started this investigation.
The Cincinnati Camera Club, renamed the Camera Club of Cincinnati when it incorporated in 1944, lasted more than 130 years. The last place they met, in Carthage, was closed during the COVID pandemic, according to posts on the club’s Facebook page, and they haven’t started up again.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Amateur photos from the 1880s show life in Cincinnati 'way back when'
