America went camera crazy at the end of the 19^th century. The invention of the gelatin dry-plate negative in the 1870s made shooting and developing photographs easy and affordable.  For the first time, large numbers of amateur enthusiasts and professional photographers set up cameras in American towns and villages, capturing the middle and lower classes at work, at home, and at play. The camera, once an artist’s tool, was now a lens on everyday life.

 

Camera Crazy highlights five late-19^th century photographers who turned their cameras on Windsor.  Artist C. Robert Hatheway began photographing Poquonock’s mills, bridges, and stores in the 1880s.  Fred D. Berry, a member of a Hartford camera club, captured Windsor’s Broad Street Green in 1892.  Professional photographers from the A.W. & G.E. Howes Company stopped in Windsor several times around 1900 to photograph local scenes and sell residents three prints for a dollar. R. W. Frost photographed his friends and co-workers at the Hotel Windsor in the 1910s, while mortician and firefighter William S. Leek chronicled newsworthy happenings in Windsor between 1890 and 1930. 

 

Trolley Stop in Poquonock, ca.1890 by C. Robert Hatheway

Windsor Collar and Cuff Company, 1902  by the A.W. & G.E. Howes Company

Together, these

 photographers produced an invaluable record of Victorian Windsor.  Construction workers pose with their tools. Housewives hold children on their hips. Wealthy, middle-class, and poor alike stand proudly in front of homes and businesses.  Featuring over 80 captivating photographs from Windsor Historical Society’s collections, Camera Crazy journeys through the camera’s lens into Windsor’s past.