Collections
Below is a complete list of collections currently found in PreVIEW. Click on a collection to see a full description:
Black Mount Collection
Bochsler Collection
British Empire Games
Brown/Hendrie Album
Bruce Murdoch Collection
Canadian Eclipse Expedition Album
Charles Cochran Album
Frank Woods Collection
Geoffrey Baker Collection
Hamilton Spectator Collection
Jessie B. Dixon Collection
Lyonde
Mills Family Album
Mountain Sanatorium Album
Original Photographs
Superior Engravers Collection
T. Roy Woodhouse Collection
William Chatfield Collection
Black Mount Collection (Sampling)
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 20,000
Dates: 1850s to present
The images are predominantly from Hamilton and date from the 1850s to the present. They are arranged geographically and then alphabetically by subject and are indexed, making them publicly accessible. Only a sampling of images has been digitized to date.
Bochsler Collection
Format: Negatives
Number: 350,000
Dates: 1958-1992
Tom Bochsler, an award winning photographer, donated his collection to the Hamilton Public Library in 2008. He was the official photographer for McMaster University, CHCH-TV, CHML radio and other local businesses. He also was a portrait photographer. His specialty, however, was industrial photography and he has won many awards for this work. There is an on-going project to digitize portions of this collection.
British Empire Games
Format: Photographs (in an album)
Number: 54
Dates: 1930
The first British Empire Games, now called Commonwealth Games, were held in Hamilton, Ontario, August 16th to 23rd, 1930. This was due to the vision of Melville Marks (Bobby) Robinson of the Hamilton Spectator, who conceived the idea in the spring of 1928. Mr. Robinson with the support of his associates in the Hamilton Olympic Club, members of the Hamilton City Council and Parks Board, and some of the leading business men of Canada, was able to bring the Games to Hamilton. Organizers each received an album of photographs of the events of the games.
Format: Photographs
Number: 17
Date: ca 1930
The Holmstead was originally built in 1830 and was owned by the Hendrie family from the 1860s until its demolition in 1936. This album contains a series of exterior and interior shots of the home allowing us a personal glimpse into the lifestyle of one of Hamilton’s more prominent families.
Bruce Murdoch Collection
Format: Negatives and Photographic Prints
Number: 7,500
Dates: 1950-1965
Bruce Murdoch, a Spectator photographer, wrote and illustrated a weekly series of articles about small towns and cities in Ontario from November 4, 1950 until August 28, 1965. His photographs and articles documented a vanishing way of life in Ontario as he sought out the oldest residents, oldest dwellings and told the story of the town. The Bruce Murdoch Collection is part of the Hamilton Spectator Collection.
Canadian Eclipse Expedition Album
Format: Photographs (in an album)
Number: 85
Dates: 1905
This album records the activities of the Canadian Eclipse Expedition to Labrador in 1905. The eclipse took place on August 30th and was photographed by astronomers from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Dominion Observatory at Ottawa and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England.
Format: Photographs
Number: 84
Dates: 1886-1902
These images are from an album containing contact prints of some of Charles Schriber Cochran’s (1854-1933) finest photographs taken when he ran a photographic studio in Hamilton. Many of them were never published and are available here for the public for the first time.
Frank Woods Collection
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 1,083
Dates: Various
Frank Woods made copies of old photographs of Hamilton and area. Prints of these copies were donated to the library. Additional copies of some of the prints were added to the Black Mount Collection but the entire collection is housed in Archives File – Woods Collection.
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 285
Dates: 1939-1945
Geoffrey Baker was an airplane mechanic with the Royal Air Force who was stationed at Mount Hope Airport during World War II. This collection is a good overview of the activities of Baker during the war including shots of the airport as well as the Hamilton area.
Hamilton Spectator Collection
Format: Negatives
Number: 2,000,000
Dates: 1939-1998
The earliest Spectator negatives that are owned by the library date from the Royal Visit of 1939. There are other subject divided collections called the “S” files which cover such subjects as football, politics, personalities and other topics. The collection of negatives from the daily newspaper begins in 1955 and they are filed by the day the image appeared in the newspaper. The daily files end in 1998. Many of these negatives have been copied and are in the Black Mount Collection while others have been copied directly from the negatives from both the “S” files and the daily files. The Bruce Murdoch Collection is also part of the Hamilton Spectator Collection.
Jessie B. Dixon Collection
Format: Negatives
Number: 165
Dates: 1901-1922
Jessie Bell Dixon was born on June 11, 1878 in Hamilton to William Dixon (1848-1920) and his wife Hannah Bell Dixon (1851-1920). Jessie Dixon was a talented amateur photographer and this collection is some of her work from the early part of the twentieth century. She was a member of the Women's Liberal Association, the Glendale Golf Club, the Burlington Golf and Country Club, the Artists' Club and the Horticultural Club. She never married and died in 1938. At the time she was residing at 771 Beach Boulevard.
Lyonde
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 20
Dates: 1891-1894
Born in Whitby, Ontario, ca 1867, Frederick William Lynde changed his surname to Lyonde and worked as a photographer for A. C. McIntyre and later, in Hamilton, for Charles Cochran. He opened his own studio in Hamilton in December 1891. He won the Mulholland and Sharp Prizes at the annual convention of the Photographic Association of Canada in 1892 for his illustrations of Tennyson’s poem “Dora”. By 1901 he and his family had moved to East Toronto. This collection is a series of photographs of the possible route of Beckett’s Drive, proposed in 1891 by Frederick G. Beckett to travel up the escarpment from the end of Queen Street to the beginning of Garth Street on the mountain. The road was opened in July of 1894.
Format: Photographs
Number: 337
Dates: 1860s
The Mills photograph album is of Hamilton with some shots of Belleville and other areas of Ontario during the early part of the 1860s. The album was kept by Catherine (Murney) Ridley, wife of Dr. Henry Ridley of Hamilton. Quite a few shots are of the Prince Consort’s Own Rifle Brigade which was stationed in Hamilton from 1862-1864.
Format: Photographs
Number: 26
Dates: 7 January 1939
This photograph album was put together to commemorate the opening of the Wilcox Pavilion at the Hamilton Sanatorium. The album was made by a patient and it is quite possible that this is the only copy of the proceedings of an important event in the development of health care in Hamilton.
Original Photographs
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 214 +
Dates: Various
This is an artificial collection of original photographs of various dates that are part of the holdings of the Hamilton Public Library. Copies of some are also found in the Black Mount Collection but the majority has never been copied before.
Superior Engravers Collection
Format: Photographic negatives
Number: 10,000
Dates: 1930s to 1950s
Superior Engravers was established in 1921. They took photographs to use etchings used in the printing of posters or newspaper and magazine advertisements. This collection is particularly strong in covering Hamilton’s commercial and industrial sectors, particularly during the years of World War II and immediately afterwards.
T. Roy Woodhouse Collection
Format: Negatives and Photographic Prints
Number: 491
Dates: Various
T. Roy Woodhouse (1892-1978) made copies of old photographs of Hamilton and area. This collection was loaned to the Hamilton Public Library which made copy negatives and prints of the collection. Some of the prints were added to the Black Mount Collection but the majority is housed in Archives File – Woodhouse Collection.
William Chatfield Collection
Format: Photographic Prints
Number: 112
Dates: 1907-1927
William Albert Chatfield was born in April of 1904 to William A. and Adeline Chatfield. The family first appears in the Hamilton City Directory in 1917 living at 9 Ellis Street. By 1934 William is listed as a winder at the Hamilton Cotton Company and he and his mother live at 10 Picton Street East. They live there until Adeline Chatfield's death in 1953 and William lives there alone until his death in 1957. The photographs in this collection were taken by William Chatfield and he signed the back of each image which is printed on commercial postcard stock. Quite often he also dated and identified the image.
