Trowbridge and Beals Photograph Collection

Raymond W. Trowbridge

Raymond W. Trowbridge (1886-1936) was an architect before he arrived in Chicago in 1908, and he practiced as an architect in Chicago until 1923. A debilitating health problem of an uncertain nature (perhaps scoliosis) forced him to stop practicing architecture and to turn instead to photography, which had previously been his hobby. His photographic commissions came from architects and their clients. He was unmarried when he died and had no heirs. Hedrich-Blessing, architectural photographers, purchased the glass negatives from his estate. Hedrich-Blessing later gave the plates to the Chicago Historical Society.

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) is regarded as the first woman press photographer. A school teacher originally, she became a full-time photographer around 1900. She was hired as a news photographer by the Buffalo Inquirer Courier in 1902 and was the official photographer for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. She lived and worked in New York City between 1905 and 1928, becoming well known. Her photographs were comprised of a wide variety of subjects and were published in magazines such as Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's Bazaar, and Town and Country. In 1928 she moved to California, then back to New York after the stock market crashed. Looking for a source of income in Chicago around 1932/1933, she “latched onto the architects who thought her a dream girl for the way she photographed their beloved houses.” By 1936 she was again in New York, where she continued to work until her death. Her works are in many major photographic collections in the United States, including the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College.

Walcott and Work

Russell S. Walcott, a Chicago native, studied at Princeton University and overseas. He practiced architecture independently in Chicago in the 1920s. Several of his designs for houses in the northern suburbs of Chicago were published between 1923 and 1927 in American Architect and Architectural Record magazines. Robert Work was associated with architect David Adler from 1917 to 1928. Walcott and Work teamed up some time thereafter and remained partners until 1936, when Walcott moved to Tryon, NC. Work continued to practice in Chicago.