New Collection Alert: Fairchild Aerial Surveys and the U.S. Customs House Collection
This week, we’re excited to announce two new collections! Both from the South Street Seaport Museum, we’ve been locating images from the Fairchild Aerial Surveys and the U.S. Customs House Collection. Dating from throughout the 20th Century, these striking collections highlight a crucial aspect of New York’s history that can often be forgotten: its role as a port city.
While New York remains a hub of finance and culture, its historic ties to maritime trade have diminished with the departure of shipping and the dominance of air travel. The US Customs House Collection highlights this past, vividly documenting New York’s life as a busy port. As ocean liners bore passengers across the Atlantic, and shipping vessels moved cargo, the Customs House collection captures the scenes that accompanied these ships: arriving passengers eagerly glimpsing the New York Skyline, lifeboat drills, loading and unloading at piers.
These images bring to life an era of New York’s history when ships dominated international travel and commerce. Whether its a throng of people waiting for disembarking visitors or a ship being loaded up with aid to bring to the Allies during the Second World War.
While the US Customs House collections bring us close to the maritime activities of New York, the Fairchild Aerial Surveys give us a sense of its scale. Founded following World War I, Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. took detailed aerial photos throughout the state and country for a variety of clients.
Sherman Mills Fairchild, the company’s founder, invented, as described in the Seaport’s blog on the collection, “ a revolutionary new high-quality aerial camera called K-3. It was electrically driven, featuring between-the-lens shutter, detachable magazine, and other innovations that advanced the technology of aerial photography in radical ways, setting the technical standard for commercial and military mapping and for vertical and oblique photography in the 1920s and ’30s.” Through the images they captured, these cameras offer a startling view of New York’s ships and harbor.
The perspective and scale provided by the aerial photographer give a context that a photo of a singular ship could not. Moreover, the quality of the images makes it easy to understand why “Fairchild won a government contract for his cameras, and by World War II, 90% of the flight-equipped cameras were of Fairchild design.” However, most of the photos are unrelated to war. While destroyers passing beneath the George Washington Bride provide an impressive sight so does the Staten Island Reserve Fleet at Kill Van Kull.
Moreover, the Fairchild Aerial Photographs are not only notable for their size and height. In capturing images of a wreck in the Ambrose Channel or the first arrival in New York Harbor of the S.S. Normandie, there is an evident skill in both the composition and the content of the photographs.
These collections play a vital role in restoring a past New York. Where tugs, liners, and battleships crowded the city’s rivers and harbors. Where piers lined the borough shores instead of parks. Where sailors wandered in and out of the city. While many of the piers and ships are gone, thanks to the South Street Seaport Museum you can explore their images on the Urban Archive map.
Read more about Sherman Mills Fairchild and his life and work on the South Street Seaport Museum’s blog here. You can also check out the South Street Seaport Museum’s stories on Urban Archive here.
