Maryland stereographs from The New York Public Library
This week the New York Public Library began offering high-resolution downloads of the more than 187,000 items from its Digital Collections that are in the public domain. They include thousands of stereographs donated by collector Robert N. Dennis, including a few hundred taken in Maryland, a sampling of which can be seen in the slideshow below.
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- Lexington Market (from The New York Public Library)
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- Skating Lake, Druid Hill Park, 1875 (from The New York Public Library)
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- Johns Hopkins Hospital (from The New York Public Library)
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- Mt. Vernon Place, southwest from Washington Monument, circa 1880 (from The New York Public Library)
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- City of Baltimore from Federal Hill, 1879 (from The New York Public Library)
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- Music Pavilion, Patterson Park (from The New York Public Library)
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- Sun Tower Building (from The New York Public Library)
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- This stereograph documenting the destruction of The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 is titled “In the tracks of the fire demon – eighty city blocks, $100,000.000 gone up in smoke.” (from The New York Public Library)
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- Will’s Mountain, Cumberland, circa 1880 (from The New York Public Library)
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- Thomas Kensett &-Co. oyster and fruit packers, Hagerstown (from The New York Public Library)
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- Great Falls of the Potomac (from The New York Public Library)
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- Conduit Street, Annapolis, 1868 (from The New York Public Library)
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- The State Capitol, Annapolis (from The New York Public Library)
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- Baltimore Street, circa 1880 (from The New York Public Library)
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- Baltimore city prison (from The New York Public Library)
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- Druid Hill Park bird’s eye view, circa 1880 (from The New York Public Library)
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- Baltimore City Hall (from The New York Public Library)
Stereoscopic photography, popular from the mid-19th century through the dawn of the Great Depression, was an early version of 3D, creating the illusion of depth by getting the viewer’s brain to combine two images taken at slightly different angles. The trick was aided by devices known as stereoscopes.
Unless you’re an antique collector, you probably don’t own a stereoscope. While you won’t see exactly what you’d see though a stereoscope, it is possible to perceive depth in flat images without any aid. One approach is cross-viewing, accomplished by focusing both eyes on a space slightly in front of the image. Another is parallel-viewing, accomplished by relaxing both eyes and gazing through the image, as if it isn’t there. A stereoscopic effect can also be approximated by animating an image pair, as in the Patterson Park GIF above, which the NYPL has made easy to do with its Stereogranimator online tool.
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