Sale 2520 | Lot 356
(CHICAGO, ILLINOIS) An archive of 89 sharply-rendered survey photographs of Chicago, documenting the city's dwindling pre-automobile days, its local businesses, dilapidated land plots, and unpaved roads. Mostly taken in February of 1915, a number of the prints depict a snowy "Windy City," with horse-drawn carriages and bundled up pedestrians. Each print with meticulously applied markers, in vivid red ink, identifying the division between land tracts and building plots. These photographs were apparently produced during a citywide planning effort, likely in association with a transition towards the modern use of electrical power, and a reconfiguring of the city to suit both pedestrians and motorized traffic (with the recent advent of the affordable automobile). Silver prints, the images measuring approximately 7½x9½ inches (19.1x24.1 cm.), each with a location caption, date, and inventory number in the negative, dissecting land markers and circled plot numbers, in red ink, on recto, and a location caption and date, in pencil, on verso. 1915
[1,500/2,500]
