Here we see the United States Capitol Building in Washington DC, shortly before completion of the second dome. The original dome had an outer layer of copper-plated wood, and was too small in relation to the size of the building after several expansions were added to the original structure. The current dome was begun in 1855, and we see it here on June 28th, 1863, nearly complete. In December 1863 it was finished, and the statue of Freedom was added to the top.

The photographer of this public domain image was Andrew Joseph Russell (1830-1902), an army Captain during the Civil War and an official photographer for the U.S. Army. He is best known for his images of the Civil War and his later work for the Union Pacific Railroad, including images of the meeting of the rails in Utah in 1869, which was also photographed by Charles R. Savage and A. A. Hart. Many of his views of the Union Pacific route from Cheyenne to Promontory Point (1868 and 1869) were published as stereo-views by Russell in the early 1870s. Then about 1875 O. C. Smith purchased the negatives, and published them under his own name (a common practice before photographic copyright was well defined) 1878 and later.

This public domain image almost looks like a medieval village scene, until one looks closely and sees the people dressed in the 19th century clothing. The spire in the background looks like it could belong to fairy-castle, though more likely it is a minaret from a mosque. The buildings are a combination of stone and wood, and look like they grew there.

This is another photograph by Guillaume Berggren whom we profiled in an earlier post titled Antiques Anyone? It was probably taken in the 1880s.

This unforgettable public domain image of the ‘White House’ Anasazi ruins in Canyon de Chelle is well-known and often reproduced. It is emblematic of cliff-dwellings of the American Southwest. One hardly notices the pueblos at the foot of the cliff — those in the rock-shelter or cave are the center of focus. Then the cliff face continues above, streaked with different colored rock layers in one direction, and stains of a thousand years of rain in the other.

The ruins on the ledge of rock are castellated, like medieval European forts. The one on the left appears to be several stories high, and buttressed for strength. Impregnable, with the high-ground advantage, certainly defenders could withstand anything but a prolonged siege, when water would be their weak point.

But they were found unoccupied; nature had already ousted the defenders — most likely by withholding water. The best laid plans are never a match for relentless time.

This is another Timothy H O’Sullivan image, like our earlier post on Canyon de Chelle, and is dated from the same time period, about 1873.

This European looking setting was actually photographed in Buffalo New York, in 1901 when they hosted the Pan-American Exposition. This building was called the Temple of Music, best remembered as the place where President McKinley was assassinated, while he was attending the exposition. Like all but one other building at the exposition, this was torn down afterwards to make room for a housing development. There are several photographs of this building at night, brightly lit by electric light-bulbs powered from a Tesla generator 25 miles away at Niagara Falls.

This image was taken by photographer Charles Dudley Arnold, who was born in Canada in 1844, and emigrated to the United States in 1862. He settled in Buffalo New York where we find him listed in the 1870 census as a librarian. In 1880 he is still in Buffalo, listed as a traveling agent. Apparently his travels took him to New York City, where he took up the practice of photography. In 1888 and 1889 he is listed as a photographer in the Brooklyn city directories. By 1900 he was back in Buffalo, this time listed as a photographer. The last mention we find of him is in the 1920 census, where he is still listed as a photographer at the age of 76.

This photograph shows the home of Chief Ko-Teth Sha-Doc, in Ketchikan Alaska. I was in Ketchikan in the 1980s and remember seeing a house painted dark-blue with a whale-totem painted on it, similar to this. Probably the home of a descendant of Ko-Teth Sha-Doc and the modern chief of the Tlingit band there. This public domain photograph was taken in 1906.

This is another image taken by a non-professional photographer, Charles Clinton Page. Page was born in New York, probably in Ulysses (Tompkins county) in January 1873, and attended Cornell University in Ithaca, graduating in 1899. He was a lawyer, and practiced in Trumansburg New York for a few years before moving to Alaska about 1906, where he was appointed Clerk of the Court by Judge Royal Arch Gunnison, also a Cornell alumni. In 1914 he was again a practicing attorney, still in Alaska, though he stated his ‘permanent’ location was Long Beach, California.