Browse Items (1393 total)

It's likely that Cheney's painting depicts the Virginia Canyon Road near Idaho Springs, Colorado, also known as the "Oh My God Highway" for its hairpin turns and precipitous cliffs. It had been created in the 1800s to access dozens of gold mines in…

Constructed as the Genesee County Poor House in 1828, this site in Bethany, NY became the warehouse for a variety of afflictions: alcoholism, mental illness, disability, and pauperism. Inmates spent years there including one, Phebe White, who died…

Centered upon an area roughly bordered by the Adirondack State Park, this map synthesizes basic topographical features—borders, lakes and waterways, cities, early roads—with pictorial elements. Some of these latter reference historical events; still,…

At the time of this painting, marine art in its modern form was less than a hundred years old. Henning shows the influence of Gustave Courbet's "landscapes of the sea" and of subsequent artists like Claude Monet, albeit in more representational form.…

This is an interior shot of the Royce and Wright Department store in Perry, NY. The store was located in the Bussey Block, at the corner of Borden Avenue and Main Street. It was in business between 1911 and 1949, when it became the Rockwell-Perry…

From a hand-typed label on the back of photograph: "View from Walnut St. bridge from intersection Hope & Water Sts. Shows rubble from demolition Perry Knitting Mills #s 1 & 2. Remains power plant left foreground adjoins site of chimney demolished…

Postcard shows northwest corner of cemetery, featuring stonework and a limestone basin originally supplied by the Hartman or "Fountain" farm on Groveland Road. It was built sometime shortly after 1886.

This engraving shows four views of the Onondaga Salt Company, located in Syracuse, NY. Due to an unusual geologic formation, salt springs located near the south end of Onandaga Lake had been an object of interest from the beginning of European…

A photo of a salt miner in Retsof Salt Mine, shoveling salt as a part of the pick and shovel method that was used in the mine before 1923

Even prior to opening of the Retsof Mine in 1880--which would become America's largest--the state of New York trailed only Michigan in production