Charles Henry Currier Collection

Photographs of middle class life in Boston, 1890s-1910s

Prints and Photographs Division

The Currier Collection provides a glimpse of middle class life in Boston at the turn of the century. Charles Henry Currier (1851-1938), a successful Boston jeweler, became a professional photographer in 1889. Over a twenty-year period, Currier photographed homes, offices, factories, charitable institutions, and recreational organizations in the Boston area, frequently portraying clients at work or with friends and family. He destroyed all of his glass plate negatives except those acquired by the Library from Ernst Halberstadt in 1950. The negatives have been reproduced as 523 reference prints and are filed by subject. The Currier Collection is recorded in the catalog of the Prints and Photographs Division. Many items from the collection were featured in an exhibition at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and described in the catalog Charles H. Currier, a Boston Photographer (Active ca. 1887-1910): An Exhibition of the Poses Institute of Fine Arts, Rose Art Museum, March 15-April 12, 1964 ([Waltham, Mass.: 1964] [16] p. TR140.C8B7).

Note: Information for this entry was compiled in the late 1970's for inclusion in: Special Collections in the Library of Congress: A Selective Guide. Compiled by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980. The entry has not been revised.