Finding aid for the Margaret De Motte Brown photographs 6144
Sue Luftschein
USC Libraries Special Collections
2017 October
Doheny Memorial Library 206
3550 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, California 90089-0189
specol@usc.edu
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
USC Libraries Special Collections
Title: Margaret De Motte Brown photographs
creator:
Brown, Margaret de Motte
Identifier/Call Number: 6144
Physical Description:
1 linear foot.
1 box; 103 photographs
Date: circa 1929
Abstract: 130 black and white photographs of historic Dutch houses and nearby landscapes in New York's Hudson Valley (Albany, Ulster,
Dutchess and Westchester Counties) taken by photographer Margaret De Motte Brown in the 1920s. Each is signed. The images
were used to illustrate the book "Historic Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776" by Helen Wilkinson Reynolds (1926).
Margaret De Motte Brown was an Illinois-born photographer who studied with Clarence White in New York City, and was an early
member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. She operated a studio in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Container: 1
Margaret de Motte Brown, born in Illinois, studied photography in New York with Clarence White, one of the preeminent pictorialist
photographers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. She was associated first, with the Photo Secession, and after White
and Gerturde Kasebier split with that group, with the Pictorial Photographers of America, for which she served as corresponding
secretary. In 1918, after inheriting some money from an uncle, Margaret left her teaching job at the Illinois School for the
Deaf in Jacksonville, IL, and opened a photography studio in Poughkeepsie, New York. She resumed exhibiting her work, and
also began collaborating with a Poughkeepsie neighbor, Helen Wilkinson Reynolds, on "Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before
1776" (1929). The book was sponsored by a local historical society whose historian was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brown also
provided photographs for "Pre-Revolutionary Dutch Houses and Families in Northern New Jersey and Southern New York" by Rosalie
Fellows Bailey (1936), a continuation of Reynolds' work. She died in Springrield, Massachusetts in 1959.
130 black and white photographs of historic Dutch houses and nearby landscapes in New York's Hudson Valley (Albany, Ulster,
Dutchess and Westchester Counties) taken by photographer Margaret De Motte Brown in the 1920s. The photographs are signed
by De Motte. The images were used to illustrate the book "Historic Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776" by Helen
Wilkinson Reynolds (1926).
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE. Advance notice required for access.
All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Manuscripts Librarian.
Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended
to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
[Box/folder no. or item name], Margaret De Motte Brown photographs, Collection no. 6144, Special Collections, USC Libraries,
University of Southern California
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Doyce Nunis, 1975, who received the photographs from Allan Nevins.
Guide to the Margaret Brown Dutch Houses Photograph Collection, PR118, New-York Historical Society Museum and Library, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/dutchhouse/dutchhouse.html.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Architecture, Domestic -- New York (State) -- 18th century -- Photographs
Historic buildings -- New York (State) -- 18th century -- Photographs
Photographs
Brown, Margaret de Motte -- Archives