Fredricks' of Broadway - Purveyor of JWB Photographs

[BettyO]

As a small-scale (make that minuscule!) collector of Lincoln Assassination related CDV's - I wondered about some of the ones I had in my collection and those in others - one Mr. Charles D. Fredricks comes to mind. I was pleasantly surprised to find a photo of his "Temple of Art" online the other day. Mr. Fredricks was a prominent photographer of John Wilkes Booth, amongst others. As a matter of fact, apparently Mr. Booth frequented Fredricks' salon quite a bit as more than a few of his photos are backmarked with that of the "Temple of Art"....

Fredricks' learned the art of photography under the wing of Jeremiah Gurney while working as a daguerreotype case maker for Edward Anthony. As a lot of gutta percha (which was used in making daguerreotype, ambrotype and heliotype cases) was imported from rubber plants in Cuba and South America, he apparently took his trade there and relocated for a spell in South America. After a few years, Fredricks returned to the States and briefly sojourned in Charleston, South Carolina before establishing a salon in Paris. While in France, he became the first photographer to create life-sized portraits.

Returning to the US in the mid 1850s, he set up a studio in New York and developed a process for enlarging photographs. His establishment at 585-587 Broadway was extremely popular, and in 1858, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper described his salon's facade with it's trademark lettering marquee as being "brilliantly illuminated" at night by colored lanterns - probably a "first attempt" at neon lighting!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_DeForest_Fredricks

http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librar...app_id=237