Photoprints
name: label: Collection Donor
content: Nickse, Hugo
label: Collection Donor
content: Johnson, Hanford
label: Collection Creator
content: Comstock, Cheney and Co.
label: Collection Creator
content: Pratt, Read and Company
label: Collection Donor
content: Steinway, Henry Ziegler
setName: label: See more items in
content: Pratt, Read Corporation Records
label: See more items in
content: Pratt, Read Corporation Records / Series 2: Comstock, Cheney and Company
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.0320, Subseries 2.11
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The PHOTOPRINTS, ca. 1870 -1989, document Comstock, Cheney's factory sites, ivory working, employees, and the town of Ivoryton.  While the majority of these photoprints are the originals assembled for Pratt Read's Ivory Museum, several are reproductions made from original photographs and negatives, which were made available to the Archives Center by citizens of Ivoryton.  A few of the photoprints were taken in 1988 1989, during the acquisition of this collection.

The photoprints are arranged according to topic into six groups: the original factory site, the keyboard factory site, ivory working, employees, Ivoryton, and miscellaneous images.  They are arranged chronologically within each group.  Each photoprint has been assigned an individual number based upon the collection number, the series, and the order of the photoprint within that series (i.e., 320/2/1, etc.).  A complete caption for almost all the photoprints is provided in this finding aid.  If a negative for a photoprint is on file with the Smithsonian's Office of Printing and Photographic Services, that negative number is provided along with the caption.

Photoprints of both the original factory site and the keyboard factory site up the road show external views of the factory buildings.  Many of them include posed groups of employees and several show the bleach houses where ivory was bleached for piano keys.  Ivory activities depicted include wagons and trucks filled with tusks and the unloading of tusks into the company's ivory vault.  Employees are shown in posed groups; many of them are identified.  Ivoryton's role as a company town is revealed in those photoprints that show workers' housing, the company's boarding house, the library, the company built theater, stores, the local bicycle club, the R. H. Comstock Drum Corps, and the company's semipro baseball team.  Miscellaneous photoprints show rail and streetcar service to the factory.