Vertical Files
Object #1 - Lauren Paljusaj
Littell House Interior - Candelaria, Nevada
Image title
0241_0018 Albumen photographic print
Locator/ID # Type of print
William H. Shockley Photograph Collection PH-00241
Collection Name & #
UNLV Special Collections, Las Vegas, NV
Repository
OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
The title of this object is Photograph of the Interior of the Princess Mill Superintendent Littell's Home, Candelaria (Nev.), 1900-1925 by traveling photographer James H. Crockwell from Salt Lake City, Utah. It was created in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It is an albumen photographic print mounted on backing board. The photograph is part of the William H. Shockley Collection in the UNLV University Libraries Special Collections and Archives, ID # 00241_0018. The photograph is in fair condition, with wear along the edges of the mounting board, slight fading along the edges of the print itself, and a ¼ inch faded horizontal strip across the top edge of the print. There is also slight fading of some of the subject elements within the photograph.
The photograph depicts the interior of a home, specifically two rooms and the objects and designs contained within. The two rooms appear to be a parlor or sitting room on the left and a dining room on the right. There are no people in the photograph; it is a still life image. The center of the image is the most sharply focused, with some elements of the foreground and background being rendered more softly. The composition is split vertically, slightly off-center to the right, and through the frame by the open doorway between the two rooms. This draws attention to the white door frame and creates depth in the image: the dining room acts as the background behind the wall, and the sitting room contains the middle- and foreground of the composition. A circular table anchors the foreground in the bottom left corner of the image, and a circular picture frame that is hung on the wall in the top right corner mirrors that. The object appears to have been cared for, perhaps as a family heirloom, judging by the fair condition.
The namesake of the collection that houses the photograph, William Hillman Shockley, was a businessman from Massachusetts who settled in Candelaria, Nevada in 1880. Shockley worked at the Mount Diablo Mine and Millworks there, eventually leaving Nevada in 1893 after the market for silver crashed. This object can be dated from the broad period of 1880-1893, but other photographs in the collection show the exterior of the Littell home with its owners Mr. and Mrs. Littell, and Mr. Shockley around 1889-1891. This smaller date range more closely reflects the time that the image was made. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, upper-middle class families would commission photography studios to document the interior of their homes and create “house books,” which were essentially photograph albums of rooms and décor (Carter 2010). In his book House Beautiful, art critic Clarence Cook writes that “the room ought to represent the culture of the family; what is their taste, what feeling they have for art; it should represent themselves and not other people.” (Cook 1878). The goal of these photographs was to represent and document these unique spaces.
INTERPRETIVE INFORMATION
This photograph is about the Littell family. W.A. Littell was the superintendent of the Princess Mill in Candelaria, Nevada. The image displays and records the interior of their home, and by extension their wealth, social standing, and personality, documented by traveling photographer James H. Crockwell. Crockwell began his photography enterprise in 1885 and was based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He traveled to various mining towns throughout Utah and Nevada, making a living by photographing the mines and people in the community. Crockwell artfully framed the image to show the depth of the rooms and elegance of the décor. The relative close-up of the parlor wall shows how the various portraits and artwork were displayed. This reveals that the family had many important people in their life. The condition of the photo shows that it was taken care of.
Around the same time that James Crockwell was starting his photography business, there existed a studio called Pach Brothers in Boston, Massachusetts that was frequently hired to document interiors (Carter 2010). Crockwell’s photograph of the Littell House interior provides a unique composition and perspective, encouraging the viewer to look closely at the details of the two rooms; conversely, Pach Brothers photographs tend to provide sweeping views of entire rooms, one at a time (see “Picturing Rooms: Interior Photography 1870-1900” below for examples). It was important to document the interiors of homes in order to show friends and relatives the family home in the days when travel could be time and cost prohibitive. The prints and albums could be given as gifts. People were proud of their personal tastes, and interior photography gave them a chance to see their environments through a different medium. This importance suggests that people placed high values on their possessions. Interior photographs provide a historical record of the family and their tastes and interests, as well as placing the environments in a larger historical context of interior decoration and architecture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albright, Gary, and Monique Fischer. “Types of Photographs, Part 1: 19th and Early 20th Century.” Last modified 2018, https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/5.-photographs/5.2-types-of-photographs
Carter, Sarah Anne. “Picturing Rooms: Interior Photography 1870-1900.” History of Photography, 34, no. 3, (2010): 251-267. https://doi.org/10.1080/03087290903361456.
Shamberger, Hugh A. The Story of Candelaria and Its Neighbors. Carson City: Nevada Historical Press, 1978.
Wadsworth, Nelson B. Set in Stone: The Mormons, the West, and Their Photographers. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992.
William Hillman Shockley Photograph Collection, 1875-1925, 1951. PH-00241. Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lauren Paljusaj - Object #2
Waldorf-Astoria, not New York, but Goldfield, Nevada
Image title
0350_0095 Postcard
Locator/ID # Type of print
C.A. Earle Rinker Collection PH-00350
Collection name and #
UNLV Special Collections, Las Vegas, NV
Repository
OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
The maker of this object is photographer Arthur M. Allen, who operated a photography studio in Goldfield, Nevada. The medium is a photograph reprinted as a postcard. Its conservation status is fair, with a fingerprint on the center right side and scratches on the image. This is not a negative that was directly printed onto photographic postcard paper; instead, it was part of a larger print run. According to the Smithsonian, postcards printed with divided backs began to appear in 1907. This was when the Universal Postal Congress voted to allow messages to be written on the backs of postcards. It belongs to the C.A. Earle Rinker Collection, ID# 0350_0095, at the UNLV University Libraries Special Collections and Archives. The object was never postmarked, so it’s likely that Rinker kept it in his collection as a memento of his time on the Nevada frontier. Despite being a postcard, diagonal creases on two of the corners suggest that the object was displayed using photo corner holders in a scrapbook or similar. There is evidence that this postcard was popular and thus was reprinted, because a colorized version with a different caption exists in a private collection elsewhere, postmarked in 1907.
The photograph shows a documentary view of the landscape. The main focus is the tent structure with a banner hung across the front of the tent over the entrance flaps reading “Waldorf-Astoria.” The foreground depicts the desert environment in which the tent structure stands: dirt, rocks, and what looks like a pickaxe. The background shows mesas on the west side of town; the camera may be facing Montezuma Peak, which is out of sight. The desert sky is looming behind the tent. Either Arthur Allen or the postcard printing company took artistic liberty by adding cumulus clouds into the sky. As evidenced by the harsh light in the sky and the shadows falling across the front of the tent, this exposure was taken around high noon, and if there were clouds in the sky at that time the light would look softer and more diffuse. Despite being a postcard, diagonal creases on two of the corners suggest that the object was displayed using photo corner holders in a scrapbook or similar. The tent has written words on one of the front flaps that have become illegible through reproduction.
In 1902, gold was discovered at Columbia Mountain on the north side of what would become Goldfield, Nevada, which was at one time called the “greatest gold camp” in the world. Around the same time, prospectors struck silver in Tonopah, a city 25 miles to the north. Both of these discoveries caused an influx of people from all over the country to a western desert hoping to capitalize on the mining boom and find work. Sometimes these people stayed and made lives in Nevada; others returned to where they came from after varying time periods. Arthur M. Allen arrived in Goldfield in 1904 and took over the local photography studio from proprietor W. I. Booth. Allen specialized in doing field work in and around the central Nevada desert and mining towns. He was the main documentarian in the first decade of the twentieth century there. He was also the area’s authorized Eastman Kodak photographic supply dealer. Cameras, processing chemicals, and film would be shipped in from Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, New York, and Allen would sell these items to consumers in the Nevada desert, as well as use them himself. The original negative was taken with a view camera, evident from the quality of detail in the end product, as well as from knowing that Allen used that type of equipment.
Cleveland A. Earle Rinker moved to Goldfield from Indiana in October 1906, after being encouraged by a boss who had invested in mines out west. He found work as a stenographer in a few different mining company offices. After the boom started to die down and stenographer jobs were hard to come by, Rinker worked doing manual labor at the mining sites. He eventually left Goldfield in 1908, traveling around the western United States before heading back to the Midwest. Letters from Rinker to his mother back home in Indiana convey that he thought life was tough out in the desolate Nevada desert. To a historical viewer, the object represented the reality of life for a common person trying to make a living in the mining boom camps.
As the late critic John Berger wrote of the photograph’s power, someone, Arthur Allen, decided that this scene was worth seeing, because it was unique among the many tent houses in Goldfield, Nevada at the height of its mining boom. The fact that someone other than the photographer, Earle Rinker, kept the postcard as a souvenir speaks to the impact and meaning of the photograph. The tent itself is nothing special; it’s the banner over the top proclaiming it the “Waldorf-Astoria” that is striking. Whereas other tent houses document place and era, this image layers in elements of humanity and humor. The photograph effectively reveals what is absent from the scene: the people who lived and worked in Goldfield and especially those who inhabited this tent. Amid the desert landscape, tools strewn around the property, and harsh sunlight, the “Waldorf-Astoria” banner on a tent that is far from luxurious is a joke that continues to land in contrast to the real Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
Lauren Paljusaj - Object #3
TOMBSTONE INFORMATION (fill in sections in yellow)
El Portal Theatre
Image title
0017_0017 Photographic print
Locator/ID # Type of print
Ernie W. and Lucille Marleau Cragin Photograph Collection PH-00017
Collection Name & #
UNLV Special Collections, Las Vegas, NV
Repository
OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
This object is a silver gelatin photographic print of the interior of the El Portal theater, located in Las Vegas, Nevada at 310 Fremont St. It is titled simply “El Portal Theatre.” The theater was built in 1927 by Charles Alexander MacNelledge and opened on June 21, 1928. This photograph is held in the Ernie W. and Lucille Marleau Cragin Photograph Collection (PH-00017) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives. Ernie W. Cragin and his business partner William Pike owned an insurance firm next to the eventual site of the theater, and the two men commissioned the El Portal to be built. These photographs were taken around 1927-28 after completion of construction. [check deed of gift for provenance]. Their conservation status is fair. There is lots of wear on the print, a one-inch scratch across the middle-right side, and a six-inch crease moving diagonally across the top right corner. The corners of the print are scuffed, with the top left corner entirely missing. There are pen markings under each of the four balconies marking “B,” which are circled and underlined.
The subject of the photograph is the ornate interior of the El Portal theater. Completed in 1927, the 700-seat theater showed its first movie, an advance screening of Clara Bow’s Ladies of the Mob, on June 21, 1928. The theater was home to an original Wurlitzer organ, shipped factory-direct from North Tonawanda, New York. The building was constructed in a hacienda style, without exterior signage other than its marquee. It was built on the site of the old Las Vegas Airdrome, a defunct outdoor movie theater. Taken after construction and before opening, there are no people in the photograph. It depicts the completed theater, showing a view of the seats, stage, and balconies. The interior is brightly lit and the perspective is from the center and back of the theater. There are three different seating sections, chandeliers, intricate decorative elements like molding and crowns, the stage and curtain, and painted ceiling and beams. Two columns on either side of the stage frame the stage. Most of the picture is sharply in focus. Some of the elements around the edges of the frame have a drop-off in focus due to the aperture of the camera, but the elements are still legible.
There is no record of the photographer or company that made this photograph. It appears to have been taken after the theater was completed, so that dates it to 1927-1928. Based on the print itself, the camera used was an 8x10 view camera, producing an 8-inch by 10-inch film negative. The print is a contact print, which means the negative was laid over a piece of photographic paper, covered with glass, and then exposed under a print enlarger to produce an exact replica of the negative with a thin black border around the edges. [need to add historical context of Fremont St. here]. This image is documentary in nature, representing the beauty and craftsmanship of Las Vegas’s newest movie theater. The composition places its focal point, the stage, in the center. There are three sections of seating: left side, a wider center area, and right side that mirrors the left side. The aisles between the seating sections create leading lines to the central focal point. The object represented a grandiose, elegant new theatre building, ready to showcase films, live plays and recitals, high school graduations, and other social events. There are no existing records of this photograph being used for promotional purposes in print form. It was mostly likely used as a record and document of the theater for internal purposes.
INTERPRETIVE INFORMATION
This photograph is documentation of the completion of the theater, possibly for promotional or record-keeping use. The finished interior is documented with the house lights on, as entering audience members would first experience the theater. It captures the detailed architectural craftsmanship. The photographer was trying to convey an objective, documentary view of the El Portal. There are no human subjects in the image, which gives it a sense of eerieness. The theater should be packed with people, but it isn’t.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Gala Fete at El Portal Planned Tonight.” Las Vegas Age. June 21, 1928. Accessed November 29, 2019. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86076141/1928-06-21/ed-1/seq-1/
James, Thurston. The Theater Props Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Theater Properties, Materials, and Construction. White Hall: Betterway Publications, 1987.
Parry, Pamela Jeffcott. Photography Index: A Guide to Reproductions. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979.
“The Show Must Go On! American Theater in the Great Depression.” Digital Public Library of America. Accessed December 1, 2019. https://dp.la/exhibitions/the-show/theater-before-the-crash.