1935 East Boston MA Moving Victorian Tenement House Down Street Glass Neg OOAK For Sale

1935 East Boston MA Moving Victorian Tenement House Down Street Glass Neg OOAK

Original, one-of-a-kind (OOAK) camera-original antique 4x5 gelatin silver glass plate negative captured in 1935: a surreal and historically rich Boston street scene and engineering photograph: a towering three-story Victorian wooden house jacked up onto massive timber cribbing and structural beams, sitting squarely in the middle of a residential roadway as it is slowly moved down the street in East Boston, Massachusetts.

Accompanied by its original vintage tan kraft newspaper darkroom morgue filing sleeve:

• The Sleeve Inscription:

  "Moving a house / down the street. / E. Boston - 1935"

Historical & Visual Content:

During the 1930s, dense urban neighborhood changes, infrastructure expansion, and road-widening projects across Boston frequently required large residential buildings to be moved rather than demolished. Negotiating a multi-ton, three-story timber dwelling through narrow city streets required immense engineering precision—clearing overhead electric wires, maneuvering around neighborhood porches, and inching the structure on rolling logs over heavy timber cribbing.

Captured on the scene with exceptional sharpness and urban atmosphere by Boston Herald-Traveler staff photojournalist Leslie Jones:

• The House in Transit: A tall, narrow three-story Victorian flat-roof residence featuring projecting three-story bay windows, ornate decorative panels, bracketed cornices, and arched upper windows. The entire building is hoisted several feet in the air, resting on cross-laid heavy cribbing blocks and steel/timber rolling balks blocking the entire roadway.

• The Streetscape & Engineering: A solitary workman stands on the road near the front blocking cribs, while overhead, workers have had to negotiate an intricate spiderweb of utility and telegraph wires stretching between wooden poles.

• East Boston Neighborhood Detail: Flanking the street are classic Boston triple-deckers and gable-front homes with laundry hanging on back lines, wooden picket/privacy fences, and local neighborhood children watching the spectacle from the data-path-to-node="16">

• Format: Heavy antique silver gelatin 4x5 glass plate negative, exposed directly in a press camera in 1935.

• Archive Ephemera Included: Accompanied by the original vintage tan kraft darkroom morgue filing envelope.

Please Note: This listing is for the original antique glass plate negative and its period paper archive sleeve only. Any positive photographic images shown in this listing are modern inverted digital scans provided solely as a visual representation to show what finished photographs print like. No physical paper photograph, modern print, or paper product of any kind is included with this purchase.

Condition:

Very Good to Excellent antique condition. Heavy glass plate is structurally sound with no cracks, breaks, or fractures. The silver gelatin emulsion is remarkably clean, sharp, and stable throughout, capturing crisp architectural trim, wood siding texture, and street paving details. Displays only minor authentic edge silvering and faint handling wear strictly along the extreme outer borders outside the primary image area. Accompanied by the original period kraft morgue filing sleeve.

The glass plate negative measures 4 x 5In.
If you collect glass negatives, please check out our collection in our store. We are currently listing thousands of original glass photo negatives from this DJD collection through the remainder of the year. Follow our store, and feel free to reach out about any questions about the negatives in this collection.
Ships with extreme care in archival materials to ensure safe transit. Feel free to reach out with any requests or questions).
Combined shipping is available (with other glass negatives)