JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 438

This fine-looking, serious and imposing specimen steals the show in the photo made to exhibit the John Peake Pharmacy, from whom this carpenter rented his second-story workspace.  I have no doubt that Mr. Peake is the well-dressed fellow in the tall beaver-skinned stovepipe hat at bottom.  The photograph was made by Marcus Ormsby on :Lower Hudson Street in New York City in 1865–one of the signs to the left of the supposed Mr. Peake says something about a picnic taking place in August 1865.  The poster above that one though says something about “300 Wanted” and looks a lot like Civil War recruitment posters that I’ve seen–if it was July/August or thereabouts the war would’ve been over for months….perhaps it was an old poster, perhaps a poster for something else entirely. 

I do like the carpenter in his working window, there above the “a” in “Peake”–he is holding a substantial planer (or moulder?) in his right hand, and wearing what looks like a union/affiliation 4-square cap.  I’m happy to see that he  is steadying himself with his left hand’s pinkey–for all of that musky confidence he  seems perfectly well in comfort keeping his whole enterprise artistically balanced with a longish-looking pinkey finger.

The buildings in this photo–not 18th century, I don’t think, but probably thirty years old or so in 1865–are virtually covered by signage advertising what was going on inside:  the larger image shows a printer, carpenter, oil cloth merchant (“oil’d clothing”), pharmacist, paintstore, sign painter and card maker, all there and doing business in about 60 feet of street.  The interesting part of the signs is the very free use of the period “.”, which ends one-word pronouncements, proper names, and just about everything else–I like that. 

All of this aside, this is just a gorgeous photograph offering a perfect glimpse into a workaday scene in NYC just after the end of the Civil War.