24 Vintage Photos of Edwardian People Posing With Pianos

The modern form of the piano, which emerged in the late 19th century, is a very different instrument from the pianos for which earlier classical piano literature was originally composed. The modern piano has a heavy metal frame, thick strings made of top-grade steel, and a sturdy action with a substantial touch weight. These changes have created a piano with a powerful tone that carries well in large halls, and which produces notes with a very long sustain time.

The contrast with earlier instruments, particularly those of the 18th century (with light wooden frames, lightly sprung actions, and short sustain time) is very noticeable. These changes have given rise to interpretive questions and controversies about performing earlier literature on modern pianos, particularly since recent decades have seen the revival of historical instruments for concert use.

These amazing vintage photos captured portraits of people posing with pianos in the 1900s and 1910s.

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May de Sousa: Edwardian Beauty With a Tragic Life

Born 1884 in Chicago, Illinois, American singer and Broadway actress May de Sousa came to fame in 1898 as the singer of “Dear Midnight of Love”, a ballad by Bathhouse John Coughlin. She attracted such attention that at end of her first full season in 1901, whilst still only a teenager, she was engaged by Frank L. Perley as one of the principals for his touring company for the musical comedy The Chaperons. With thirty four speaking and singing roles and a chorus of sixty it was said to be the largest musical organization so far seen in America.

In April 1904, May was engaged to replace Bessie Wynne in the role of ‘Sir Dashemoff Daily’ in The Wizard of Oz and in September of that year followed that same actress in Babes in Toyland. By now she was an established success and much in demand.

May went to London after all as a star in her own right, and first appeared on the London Stage as ‘Cinderella’ at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Other London successes followed, including Castles in Spain, The Geisha and The Girls of Gottenberg.

Now she was a major star on both sides of the Atlantic and it seemed she had the World at her feet. Personal tragedy struck on January 31, 1910 however, when her mother was discovered dead in a gas filled room. It was not determined whether the tragedy had been a suicide or the result of an unfortunate accident. Continuing her career on both sides of the Atlantic, she was in France shortly before the outbreak of the Great War and escaped the German invasion by the margin of only a few weeks. De Sousa played the role of a model Juliette in the 1911 play of “The Count of Luxembourg” at Daly’s Theatre in London. In 1913, De Sousa declared bankruptcy.

De Sousa retired in 1918, and eventually moved to Shanghai. In 1943, following a seven-month imprisonment as a civilian internee under the Japanese in Chapei Civil Assembly Center, in Shanghai, China, she returned to the United States on the Gripsholm and took a job in Chicago as a scrubwoman in the public-school system. Her years of internment had taken their toll on her health however, and soon she was forced to quit working because she was too weak to continue. Without means to support herself, her condition worsened through malnutrition and she died, penniless and alone, a charity case in the county hospital on 8 August 1948.

Once the toast of Europe and America, whose voice had thrilled royalty and the nobility as well as countless masses, she died alone and unloved, unable even to feed herself. Her body lay unclaimed in the morgue and was interred in a paupers grave, at age 66.

Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of a young May de Sousa in the early 20th century.

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Photographs of a Woman’s Dream of Becoming America’s First Police Woman, 1909

Vintage photographs of a suffragette posed to illustrate woman police concept in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1909.

In 1854, the first police matrons were hired by New York City to search and guard female prisoners, but they were civilians with no law enforcement powers. From this beginning, women became encouraged to apply for similar positions in various parts of the United States.

In 1910, the Los Angeles Police Department appointed the first regularly rated policewomen, Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells. Her appointment refuted the popular notion of matrons as being masculine and not very bright, because she was a college graduate, a social worker, and had deliberately sought the position of police officer.

Mrs. Wells soon became a pioneer in the national movement to have police departments hire women as officers. However, from the inception of this movement, women were hired by quotas and encountered discrimination, silent contempt, and double standards. Several court cases are discussed to illustrate the hurdles women had to fight to reach equality of employment in police agencies.

Today policewomen are involved in all aspects of police work. Cases in which policewomen have been prominent in various police departments are enumerated.

Many people could not even imagine what a female police officer would look like so this Ohio suffragette demonstrated what a policewoman would look like making an arrest.

(Photos: Library of Congress)

Sublime and Atmospheric Photos By Léonard Misonne

Léonard Misonne (1870 – 1943) was a Belgian pictorialist photographer. He is best known for his atmospheric photographs of landscapes and street scenes, with light as a key feature, and as a pioneer of pictorialism. According to the Directory of Belgian Photographers, “Misonne’s work is characterised by a masterly treatment of light and atmospheric conditions. His images express poetic qualities, but sometimes slip into an anecdotal sentimentality.”

 

Misonne would often photograph things that were strongly illuminated from behind, producing a halo effect. He would also retouch the lighting effects in his photographs, experimenting with and using many techniques, such as the Fresson process and later the bromoil and mediobrome processes. “If I were asked what I have learned during my forty years as a photographer,” said Misonne, nicknamed “the Corot of photography”. “I should reply – the most important thing I have learned is to observe the beautiful effects of atmosphere and light.” He also invented the “flou-net” and “photo-dessin” processes.

Take a look through these extraordinary photographs taken by Misonne:

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Amazing Vintage Photographs of Fountain of Ice on Washington Boulevard in Detroit From the Early 20th Century

One of the unique features of Detroit in winter is the famous ice fountain on Washington Boulevard. Several jets of water are allowed to play all winder, and the result is a massive berg of ice which sometimes reaches a height of nearly thirty feet, and contains many tons of the crystal.

The tradition of forming ice sculptures in the city dates back to at least the early 1900s. These amazing vintage photographs show winter scene on Washington Boulevard in Detroit from between the 1900s and 1920s.

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Stunning Autochrome Pictures of Petra, Jordan From the 1900s to 1940s

Petra is a historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to the mountain of Jabal Al-Madbah, in a basin surrounded by mountains forming the eastern flank of the Arabah valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.

Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system, Petra is also called the “Red Rose City” because of the color of the stone from which it is carved. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985 and has been described as “one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage” Petra is a symbol of Jordan, as well as Jordan's most-visited tourist attraction.

These stunning autochrome pictures of the ancient Nabatean stone city were taken by the photography department of the American Colony from between the late 1900s to the 1940s. Take a look:

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Intriguing Pictures of Street Life in San Francisco’s Chinatown At the End of the 19th Century

On August 28, 1850, at Portsmouth Square, John Geary, the very first mayor of San Francisco, officially welcomed 300 “China Boys” to the city. From the 1850s to the 1900s, San Francisco's Chinatown was the port of entry for early Chinese immigrants from the west side of the Pearl River Delta. By 1854, the Alta California, a local newspaper which had previously taken a supportive stance on Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, began attacking them, writing after a recent influx that “if the city continues to fill up with these people, it will be ere long become necessary to make them subject of special legislation”.

These photographs were taken by German-American photographer Arnold Genthe. Genthe taught himself photography after emigrating to San Francisco in 1895 to work as a tutor for the son of Baron and Baroness J. Henrich von Schroeder. Intrigued by the Chinese section of the city and also having his own photographic studio in Chinatown, Genthe wandered around the area photographing its inhabitants, from children to drug addicts. 

Due to his subjects' possible fear of his camera or their reluctance to have pictures taken, he sometimes hid his camera. He also sometimes removed evidence of Western culture from these pictures, cropping or erasing as needed. About 200 of his Chinatown pictures survive, and these comprise the only known photographic depictions of the area before the 1906 earthquake.

Take a look at these pictures of street life in San Francisco’s Chinatown at the end of the 19th century:

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Group Portraits of Women’s Ice Hockey Teams From the Early 20th Century

Ice hockey is believed to have evolved from simple stick and ball games played in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United Kingdom, Ireland and elsewhere, primarily bandy, hurling, shinty and lacrosse. Arguably the games most influential to the early design of ice hockey were early forms of an organized sport today known as bandy, a sport distinctly separate from ice hockey. These games were brought to North America and several similar winter games using informal rules developed, such as shinny and ice polo, but would later be absorbed into a new organized game with codified rules which today is ice hockey.

Women’s hockey teams started forming early in the 20th century, though there wouldn’t be a professional league for a long time. Women still played casually hockey for fun, and so before long, they started getting organized.

The first formal women’s match happened in Ontario in 1891; however, women’s teams didn’t really get going until the 1910s and 1920s when college teams started to form in the US and especially in Canada. Below are some vintage photos of women’s ice hockey teams from between the 1900s and 1920s:

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Amazing Photos of American Houses Around 1900

In 1900, for instance, a typical American new home contained 700 to 1,200 square feet of living space, including two or three bedrooms and one or (just about as likely) no bathrooms. It was probably a two-story floor plan.

At the turn of the 20th Century, more than 20 percent of the U.S. population lived in crowded units, with entire families often sharing one or two rooms. Most homes were small, rural farmhouses and lacked many basic amenities, complete plumbing and central heating chief among them.

A set of amazing photos from paws22 that shows what American houses looked like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Burton family with sod house, Bartley, Nebraska

Barn and horseman

Big brick house

Country cottage with family

Eaton homestead, Tacoma, Virginia

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Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland and Her Daughter at the First Meeting of the Ladies Automobile Club, 1903

The Ladies’ Automobile Club was Great Britain’s first dedicated motor club for women. It was not exclusively a motorsport association, but it was one of the first bodies to organize motor races for women in the UK.

Talk of a women’s motor club began in 1899. Newspapers described the actress Lily Langtry as one of its first members, and Viscountess Haberton as the founder. Little else was heard for three or four years. In 1903, it starts to be mentioned in the papers again, with Lady Cecil Scott Montagu was its first acknowledged leader.

Between 1903 and 1904, the original club seems to have collapsed. Contemporary reports claim this was due to disagreements about membership criteria. Only ladies in “society” were intended to join. Most of the early members were from the titled classes.

Millicent Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, with her daughter Lady Rosemary Millicent Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, at the first meeting of the Ladies Automobile Club, 1903.

Millicent, the Duchess of Sutherland, became its first president in 1904. She oversaw the first Club event in June, a meeting and group drive from Carlton Terrace in central London to the Ranelagh Club in Barnes, via Pall Mall and the park. Fifty-six cars were involved. Many of the ladies drove themselves, although some relied on their chauffeurs. This fact was did not go un-noticed by observers. Among the observers on the day was Queen Alexandra, who watched the parade from the window at Buckingham Palace.

The club’s first annual general meeting was the following month. Rooms were acquired at Claridges Hotel for the use of members, as well as a garage.

Most of the LAC’s activities were social in nature. Typically, one member would hold a meeting at her house. This was followed by a drive out, often to the Ranelagh or Hurlingham clubs, for tea. In 1904, an engineer was booked to give a series of talks on the workings of the internal combustion engine. From time to time, other talks were given, sometimes by members themselves, on aspects of motoring, or their own four-wheeled adventures.

(via Speedqueens)

Portraits of Austrian Actress Marie Schleinzer in a Bat Costume, ca. 1900

Austrian stage actress Marie Schleinzer in costume for the ballet “Around Vienna”. Photos by Adele K.u.K Hof Atelier, ca. 1900.