Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad: Photographs of William H. Rau | 
 enlarge | Creator: John C. Van Horne
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Category: Book
List Price: $65.00
Buy New: $39.69
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 946668
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 264
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 10.3 x 8.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 0812236254
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.962510092
EAN: 9780812236255
ASIN: 0812236254
Publication Date: March 10, 2002
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In the 1890s Philadelphia's preeminent photographer, William H. Rau, was commissioned to take more than 450 photographs along the routes of the Pennsylvania Railroad in order to promote travel on the railway to the general public. Known as "the standard railroad of the world," the PRR was the largest rail system in the East and linked metropolitan New York and Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and such industrial cities of the Midwest as Chicago and St. Louis.
Using a mammoth view camera that made 18-inch by 22-inch glass negatives, Rau produced a spectacular series of images for the railroad's promotional use. The remarkably detailed and texturally rich albumen prints, on deposit at The Library Company of Philadelphia, display a harmony between the railroad and the natural and industrial landscapes through which the line passed. The collection includes striking views not just of railcars, tracks, and stations but also of cities and towns, bridges, ferry boats, rivers, canals, factories, residences, and hotels, mostly in Pennsylvania, but with some views also of New York, New Jersey, and Maryland.
This oversize volume reproduces almost 100 of the photographs, carefully selected for their historical and artistic significance, as full-page quadtone images, capturing the impact of the originals as closely as possible. The photographs are arranged in geographical order along the various branches of the PRR, and each photograph is accompanied by a descriptive caption provided by PRR expert James J. D. Lynch, Jr. In the three essays that complement the photographs, Kenneth Finkel details Rau's career and early commercial photography, Mary Panzer places Rau and his PRR photographs in the context of the history of American landscape photography, and John R. Stilgoe discusses the advent of railroad advertising photography and its role in shaping perceptions of the American landscape.
Published in cooperation with The Library Company of Philadelphia.
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| Customer Reviews:
Rau's Look at the PRR March 24, 2002
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
William H Rau (1855-1920), one of Philadelphia's preeminent photographers, was commissioned by the PRR in 1890 to photograph hundreds of scenes along its lines in order to promote travel by the general public. This book contains 87 of his 463 original images, which are owned by American Premerier Underwriters, Inc., sucessor firm to the Penn Central and PRR railroads, and on deposit with The Library Company of Philadelphia.
John R. Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at Harvard expresses in one of the book's three essays, "These photographs glisten with an energy born of opening, not the opening of pioneers opening the forest nor the opening of the first half-century of railroad technology, but the opening of wholly constructed, wholly controlled, scheduled and maintained, wholly artifical space."
Rau was a world class photographer and this is a fine selection of his PRR work. Therefore, it would be difficult to rate this book as anything other than first class.
These are excerpts from my complete review of this book, which will appear in a future edition of "The Keystone," the official quarterly publication of the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society (PRRT&HS).Alan B. Buchan
Member, Board of Directors - PRRT&HS
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