The Stedman and Moses Collection of Glass Plate Negatives
In the fall of 1977, Dr. George Hart noticed workmen loading wooden crates on to a truck at the Lake Placid Club, Lake Placid, NY. He looked closer and realized that boxes of old glass plate negatives were just about to be carted off to the town dump. He asked the workers to hold off on their mission and soon the glass plate negatives found their way to the Center for Music, Drama, and Art (now known as the Lake Placid Center for the Arts), then finally to the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society.
Upon his death in the early 1960s, photographer Irving Lynn Stedman had left his collection of negatives to Jim Barry of Lake Placid. Barry had worked for Stedman beginning in 1935, but was unable to find a place immediately to store the large collection. As a result, the collection moved about the premises of the Lake Placid Club for some years until Dr. Hart spotted it in 1977.
The collection provides a visual record of Lake Placid and the surrounding area from about 1898 until about 1940. The Stedman and Moses Collection of Glass Plate Negatives consists principally of the work of two men – Irving Lynn Stedman himself and a predecessor on the Lake Placid photographic scene, Chester Davis Moses.
Take a peek at the collection…
To view more, please visit New York Digital Heritage.
If you are interested in researching the archive, a full list of the collection can be found here – Stedman and Moses Collection of Glass Plate Negatives – Finding Aid