[View of Niagara Falls]
Photograph
[View of Niagara Falls]
From the album [Snapshots from travels in the United States and Canada]
1903 - 1905
Gelatin silver prints
Overall: 4 7/8 × 6 3/4 in. (12.4 × 17.1 cm)
Gift of the 3M Foundation, ex-collection Louis Walton Sipley, 1977
1978.1292.0026a
Inscriptions Typed in ink on slip of paper placed behind photograph: "The Caldron" at Niagara Falls and a part of the Canadian Falls, I believe. A. Thomas Nelson took the picture about 1903 to 1905 by borrowing lead weighted pants with weighted boots attached, from a workman as he came off the job with others. They were driving piles for the underground tunnel at the Canadian Falls, at that time.
Mr. Nelson held the camera over his head, backwards, to get it sufficiently high as he had to stand with his knees against the current. (A good thing I did not know him then or know about it). Taken on a return trip from the International Sunday School Convention in Toronto, Canada, to which he was a delegate and where he saw John Wanamaker of Philadelphia and his splendid collection of religious paintings which Mr. Wanamaker had shipped there for display; some have since been destroyed by fire. Mr. Nelson never again saw a favorite, I believe of Peter and John running on the resurection morning to tell the others that Christ had risen, - so he supposed it to have been destroyed by fire. One occassionally sees prints of what I believe to have been the same painting.
Rodman Wanamaker, a son, and managing head of the store after his father died about 1923, was the only one at the country home on Old York Road when fire broke out: he cut the paintings (the two, million dollar paintings by Munkacie (spelling?) I believe, with others, from their frames with his pen knife and threw them out on the snow. This was all that was saved of the furnishings; grand pianos and everything burned. I can not see the Wanamaker home there now and wonder if it has been torn down: it seems to have been. The paintings are now stored (since the fire, "now" being 1957, in the Wanamaker Store for safety, except for a month preceding Easter when the two Munkacie paintings are hung in the central section of the store to be seen by the public. Many visitors come from a distance to see them and many in Philadelphia never miss seeing them again and again.
When John Wanamaker was living and after the paintings had been removed to the store for greater saftey, (the two Munkacie's) they were placed in an immense room near his offices, - a Munkacie painting at either end, finely lighted and with black velvet backgrounds hung in large flat folds. There were two daven ports placed back to back in the center of the room where Mr. Wanamaker went to see the paintings and for meditation.
We have had permission to take out-of-town visitors into that room and at one time saw Mr. Wanamaker's Bible on a davenport where he had been for quiet meditation. Since Mr. Wanamaker is gone, offices and this room dismantled, I understood years ago that the two great Munkacie paintings displayed in the store prior to the Easter season are carefully stored in the store between times.
Re: the rainbow. At the Canadian end of the International Bridge between the U.S.A. and Canada, which may be walked or driven across, one can see a bright rainbow in late afternoon on sunny days from the Canadian side, made of course by the sun and mist of the Falls.
Mr. Nelson held the camera over his head, backwards, to get it sufficiently high as he had to stand with his knees against the current. (A good thing I did not know him then or know about it). Taken on a return trip from the International Sunday School Convention in Toronto, Canada, to which he was a delegate and where he saw John Wanamaker of Philadelphia and his splendid collection of religious paintings which Mr. Wanamaker had shipped there for display; some have since been destroyed by fire. Mr. Nelson never again saw a favorite, I believe of Peter and John running on the resurection morning to tell the others that Christ had risen, - so he supposed it to have been destroyed by fire. One occassionally sees prints of what I believe to have been the same painting.
Rodman Wanamaker, a son, and managing head of the store after his father died about 1923, was the only one at the country home on Old York Road when fire broke out: he cut the paintings (the two, million dollar paintings by Munkacie (spelling?) I believe, with others, from their frames with his pen knife and threw them out on the snow. This was all that was saved of the furnishings; grand pianos and everything burned. I can not see the Wanamaker home there now and wonder if it has been torn down: it seems to have been. The paintings are now stored (since the fire, "now" being 1957, in the Wanamaker Store for safety, except for a month preceding Easter when the two Munkacie paintings are hung in the central section of the store to be seen by the public. Many visitors come from a distance to see them and many in Philadelphia never miss seeing them again and again.
When John Wanamaker was living and after the paintings had been removed to the store for greater saftey, (the two Munkacie's) they were placed in an immense room near his offices, - a Munkacie painting at either end, finely lighted and with black velvet backgrounds hung in large flat folds. There were two daven ports placed back to back in the center of the room where Mr. Wanamaker went to see the paintings and for meditation.
We have had permission to take out-of-town visitors into that room and at one time saw Mr. Wanamaker's Bible on a davenport where he had been for quiet meditation. Since Mr. Wanamaker is gone, offices and this room dismantled, I understood years ago that the two great Munkacie paintings displayed in the store prior to the Easter season are carefully stored in the store between times.
Re: the rainbow. At the Canadian end of the International Bridge between the U.S.A. and Canada, which may be walked or driven across, one can see a bright rainbow in late afternoon on sunny days from the Canadian side, made of course by the sun and mist of the Falls.
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