Mr. Lincoln's Photographer

[Christopher Handy]

(11-11-2018 03:07 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Welcome to the forum, Mr. Handy, and thank you so much for clearing things up!

One of our staff members at the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, married into a Greek family of restauranteurs who once owned the building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. that had been Brady's studio. She once ventured to the third-floor (where a skylight existed - I think for better lighting of his subjects?), and there were still things scattered around from a studio. Did Levin Handy use the same studio, and could those have been some of his discards? I think this would have been in the mid-1950s.

Levin C. Handy, at the time of his death, and for some years before, maintained his studio in his home at 494 Maryland Avenue SW (the site is now more or less under the National Air and Space Museum). He did work in Brady's Pennsylvania Avenue studio, for a time, but Brady vacated those premises sometime in the 1880's (he returned to Washington for a while in the 1890's, living at the Maryland Avenue address, and his place of business was on F Street NW). It's possible, I suppose, that some of the detritus from Brady's photographic business may have remained at the site, especially if the building stood vacant or the third floor went unused for some time.