I knew that the family business, established in 1866, had
progressed from portraiture photography to commercial photography until they
finally closed some 120 years later, and I was vaguely aware that they once
also specialized in photographic reproductions of paintings, hand coloring the
prints, but I did not know that my grandfather, Harry, went on such
assignments, indeed, this particularly important one.
A recent issue of the Wall Street Journal reported that while the Armory Show "was widely panned" it nonetheless"sparked a new era" --
The show lasted a
scant four weeks, but Manhattan went on to become the Florence of modernism.
The Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1929, became the first cultural
institution in the Western Hemisphere ever to outclass comparable institutions
in Europe. New York became the natural home of glass-box Bauhaus modernism at
its best and worst (a style that is now re-emerging with new panache). And it
became the home of Abstract Expressionism, of de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock—of
the ultimate, transcendent achievement of abstract art....It all started at the
Armory.
My beloved Uncle Philip was the family historian and regrettably
I never had the opportunity to record all of his incredible family and business
knowledge before he died.
He and my
father (who was known by his middle name, Robert, and not his given one, Harry)
were the last Hagelstein brothers to run the business.
I had chosen to go into publishing.
Uncle Phil had given me some documents and from those
I pieced together that my great-grandmother was from the Hamburg, Germany area
but most of my family came from Cologne.
Four brothers, Anthony, Carl, Philip, and William came to America between
1853 and 1856.
Philip and Anthony bought
a photography business in 1866 at 142 Bowery in New York City and although the
two other brothers may had been involved on and off, Philip apparently was the
main driving force. (William was drafted into the Union Army and he survived
the war, settling in Brooklyn and went into the metal fabrication business.
Carl went to California to make his fortune but came back after the war).
My grandfather, Harry, entered the business around 1905
and about 1915 he moved the business from the Bowery to 100 Fifth Avenue where
it flourished (completing its transition to a commercial photographic firm from
portraiture which it specialized in during the Bowery years) through the
depression and two major wars.
His sons, my father and my Uncle Philip, ran the business
after WW II until the late 1980's at which time it was liquidated. It was moved to Long Island City from 100 5th
Avenue just before my father's death in 1984.
I have lamented the fact that the records of Hagelstein
Brothers and, more importantly, hundreds and hundreds of Daguerreotypes and
prints were destroyed in the early 1990's when my Uncle Philip's home (where
they were stored) had to be sold and he went into a nursing home suffering from
dementia.. We had sought to donate them
but there was no interest at the time either from libraries or museums. There was just no place to store them. Today, they would have all
been digitized.
Coincidentally, at about the time I learned of the Armory assignment, out of the blue I received an email from
another reader, Tom Luzzi, who had come across my blog after searching for
information on Hagelstein Brothers as he had some photographs from their studio -- including ones of my grandfather and his sister
-- and asked whether I would like to have them, explaining, my mother, who is 93, said the pictures came
from her Aunt when they lived in Brooklyn in the early 1900's. Her Aunt was best friends with a Kate
Hagelstein (Harry's sister), who later became Kate McClelland. The photos are from the Hagelstein studio and
are of a Harry Hagelstein as a child while another photo shows Harry and Kate.
Then he said he had several more, some which might be of
the family, so he went to the considerable time and effort to scan and send
them all. This thoughtful, and generous
act on his part allows me to incorporate his photographs as well as the few
that I have from the Hagelstein Brothers Photography studio when it was in the
Bowery and they are interspersed throughout this entry or appended at the end.
Remarkably, he produced the only photograph I have ever
seen on the co-founder of the studio, my great grandfather, Philip. I am
profoundly grateful to Tom for making the effort to contact me and then to scan and email the photographs he had from
his mother.
Nonetheless, most of the studio's photographs have been
lost to time.
But I was delighted to
learn about the studio's work on the Armory exhibit and hope that anyone
looking for information on Hagelstein Brothers Photographers will find this
summary helpful. Below is the beginning and conclusion of a long article that
appeared in the February and March 1942 issues of
The Commercial Photographer. It
was about the firm and its innovative work in commercial
photography.
(Unfortunately, Blogger does
not support PDFs so I can not include it in its entirety, but anyone doing
research on the studio can contact me at lacunaemusing@gmail.com and I will
send a PDF.)
Creating
"Sales Powered Photography"
A Two Part Series
(With fourteen illustrations by Hagelstein Brothers)
"SALES Powered
Photography"-this phrase which appears in the telephone Red Book
advertising of Hagelstein Brothers, 100 Fifth Avenue; New York City, aptly
suggests the firm's outstanding accomplishment in the field of merchandising. H.
P. Hagelstein has developed an organization which is expert in dramatizing
furniture, pianos, radio cabinets, lamps, china, glass, silverware, and other
merchandise for the manufacturer who uses photography to sell his product to
the wholesale or retail dealer. Associated with him in the management of the
business
are his sons Philip
and Robert.
This firm was
founded by Philip Hagelstein, father of the present owners, and his brothers in
1866. In his studio, on the Bowery, he originally specialized in fine
Daguerreotypes and portraits made on wet plates, working with the limited
materials available at that time. Examples of his Daguerreotypes dating from
1860 to 1870 were included in the Eastman Kodak exhibit during the recent New
York World's Fair. About 1880 he began to pioneer in commercial work for
manufacturers in the conservative fashion of the time, and as his sons entered
the business this specialty was further developed. Not until 1900, however, was
portrait work entirely discontinued and attention focused on two special
fields, one dealing with the manufacturer's merchandising needs, the other
consisting of reproductions of paintings for artists and publishers.
When this latter
specialty was a very important phase of the business, direct negatives from
llx14 to 24x30 were made, and reproductions in black-and-white, sepia, and hand
colored prints on platinum paper were sold to publishers and art dealers. These
were discontinued due to the entry of mechanical printing processes, such as
photogravure, photogelatine and color printing. But Hagelstein Brothers still
have in their files examples of the exquisite reproductions of noted paintings
which were done on platinum papers. And today they still photograph paintings
for portrait artists, murals, and frequently sculpture.
Harry P.
Hagelstein, who now directs sales contacts and planning, is as creatively
minded in adapting photography to effective merchandising as in the technical
aspects of camera work. That's an important reason why many customers have been
buying photography from this concern for years-one firm, in fact, has been on
the books since 1878 when Philip Hagelstein began to be interested in the
relation of merchandise and photography.......
The firm's very
best advertising, it is safe to say, is to be found in its adherence to the
extremely high standards that Philip Hagelstein set for himself when photograph
was very young and adventurous in 1866.
The profession has grown considerably older, but reliability and
craftsmanship are still "better coin than money"....At any rate,
Hagelstein Brothers have built on them for 75 years -- and will continue so in
the future.
And they did for nearly fifty years more until
advertising shifted from producing photographs for salesmen's catalogs to other
media, magazines, radio, and television.
One of the nice things writing this blog is occasionally hearing
from readers whose lives have been touched in similar ways. This is a postscript to this particular
entry, received two years after I wrote it.
I’m including the email here by permission of the writer, Frank Fink, as
well as the photograph he sent of his grandfather, taken by my
great-grandfather in 1889. As I said in
the entry, most of the precious glass plates and prints from Hagelstein
Brothers were destroyed after my Uncle’s death, although I had tried to place
them with a museum. This was before the
age of digitization. It would have been
a very different outcome if it happened today.
Still, I’m always on the lookout for prints from Hagelstein Brothers,
and it was thoughtful of Frank Fink to forward this image.
Hi Bob,
I ran across your
blog while researching the provenance of a photograph of my grandfather,
Ferdinand Ephraim Fink (b. 1885, New York NY, d. 1961 Brooklyn NY). The print
carries the Hagelstein imprint on the bottom.
The handwritten caption on the back reads "Daddy when he was 4
years old." I believe that was written by my aunt Doris. That would have made the date of the portrait
1889.
Anyway, it looks
like you are on your way to recreating the Hagelstein archives. Hope this
helps.
Best,
Frank Fink
For more information on the history of Hagelstein Bros.,
go to this link
