Mathew Brady’s Manhattan Photo Studio Photo Tour

New York City is a strange place. Manhattan always seems to have some new gigantic building going up, making it easy to forget that next to 21st Century skyscrapers are century-and-a-half old buildings that Abraham Lincoln looked at when he visited. 359 Broadway, not far from Federal Plaza, was built in 1852. Mathew Brady made the top three floors his studio and on February 27, 1860 Lincoln visited Brady’s studio for a campaign photograph. Some sources indicate that Brady had moved his operation to another temporary location on Bleecker Street when the campaign photo was taken.

When I visited the building on November 30, 2022 the store on the first floor of the five story structure was temporarily closed. It is the center building below with a front entrance painted red that housed a Halloween space just a month before I visited.

Three decades ago, New York City protected the building as a landmark, both because of its historical significance as the base of Brady’s operations and because of its architectural significance. New York’s Landmark Preservation Commission described Brady as “one of the most important photographers in
American history.”

 

Blood Manor was only on site for a short while but if you look at the windows above the sign you can see the exquisite 19th Century workmanship over the 21st Century schlock.

The windows on each floor are different and the product of different designs. The building is Italianate and it was constructed in what in the 1840s was New York’s most prestigious shopping district. A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Story was just south of this building. At the time, it was the largest store catering to women in the country. Women’s “saloons,” really restaurants where women could relax and dine without being harassed by men, were nearby, with the largest just north of Brady’s studio. Taylor’s Saloon at 365 Broadway served 3,000 people on most days. When Brady had his studio on the top three floors, a saloon was operated on the first floor by the building’s owner James Thompson.

In the 1850s there were approximately eighty photo studios in Manhattan. Nearly half were on Broadway because it was a popular promenade where well-to-do people would stop in for a photo. According to the Landmark Commission report on the building:

Brady’s gallery, occupying the upper three floors of the
building, typified the luxurious standards maintained in many Broadway
galleries at the time. ‘Ihrough an elegant street entrance flanked by
display cases containing photographs, one ascended to a reception room
richly furnished with satin wall hangings, gilt and enamelled chandeliers,
velvet tapestry carpets, and rosewood furniture. Suspended on the walls
were portraits of U.S. Presidents, European nobility, generals, and cultural
figures of all nations and professions. Past the reception room was an
office and a ladies’ parlor decorated in gold and green and furnished with
rosewood furniture. ‘IWo “operating rooms” — one with a southern and one
with a northern exposure — led from the reception room. Plate-cleaning and
electroplating were done on the fourth floor, while the fifth floor provided
storage space and a skylit studio for special lighting effects.

While it may have been photographed at Brady’s temporary Bleecker St., Brady’s February 27, 1860 photo helped Lincoln win the 1860 election. Lincoln was in New York to deliver his famous Cooper Union speech in Lower Manhattan. It is one of the most reproduced photos of Lincoln.

Brady was long believed to have been born in Warren County in New York near Lake George. Evidence has emerged in recent years that he was actually born in Ireland and brought to the United States by his parents. Brady’s two most important subordinates, Alexander Gardner from Scotland and Timothy O’Sullivan believed to be from Ireland, were both immigrants.

 

 

 

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