Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad : The Photographs of William H. Rau
Book review by Eric Miller
When I was a kid, I used to visit the Pennsylvania Room at the Altoona Area public library. In the back of the room were huge, aging volumes that contained large photos of the Pennsylvania landscape in the mid to late 1800s.
Unnoticed for years, these priceless photographs were dismissed as valuable only to local history buffs and fans of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In more recent times, however, the photographs grew to be recognized for their photographic and historical value in larger terms. The views they show provide dramatic, nostalgic, and panoramic insight into a long lost time when transportation was first connecting the two great oceans of the world.
Employed as a photographer for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Rau eventually mounted 463 views in albums titled "Pennsylvania Railroad Scenery." The albumen prints measure 18x22 inches and depict the then still wild landscape of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland.
For the Pennsylvania Railroad, the photographs provided a means to introduce Americans to the vastness of their country and the advantages of train travel and served as a magnet to draw settlers to new and promising lands.
The 463 photographs represent only a portion of the work he and his firm undertook for the "greatest railroad on earth." Most of the photographs contained in this volume were taken in 1891 and 1893. The railroad displayed many of them in a promotional brochure boosting attendance at the 1893 World 's Columbia Exposition--thus encouraging travel to the largest-ever fair by rail.
Following the event, Rau's photographs were held in the Columbian Museum in Chicago (now the Field Museum of Natural History). In the 1920s many of them were donated to the Blair County Historical Society in Altoona, which provided me with my first glimpse of these impressions that made a life-long impact.
Owned by the railroad, many other photographs ended up in a vault at Philadelphia's Broad Street Station. Following the 1971 publishing of a book which contained many of the photos, six of the albums were loaned to the Altoona Area Public Library--their significance unappreciated until a Temple University professor recognized their significance in the mid-1980s. Shortly thereafter the albums were moved to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, some of which were featured in a 1987 exhibition.
The photographs were then moved to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in Harrisburg for safe keeping. The Pennsylvania Railroad had merged with the New York Central and some other lines in the 1960s to form the Penn Central, which was also defunct by the 1980s. The successor firm, American Premier Underwriters, then moved Rau's work to The Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1997 an agreement between American Premier Underwriters and the Altoona Area Public Library allowed 192 of the photographs to return to Altoona.
The photographs represented in this volume provide an invaluable look at the scenery in 19th Century Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. A view of Broad Street Station in Philadelphia shows the Philadelphia City Hall still under construction and William Penn's hat--which for years represented the upper height limits of buildings allowed in the city--still not in view. A view of Manhattan shows a bustling low-rise city with the Brooklyn Bridge as a backdrop, and a view of the Monongahela River at Charleroi shows a steamboat chugging through a still undeveloped and industrialized Southwestern Pennsylvania landscape.
This book is the closest you'll ever get to a vacation of dreams--a trip back to a beautiful and wild Pennsylvania in a promising age of discovery.
Reviewed by Eric Miller
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