Fine photograph of the PACH brothers posing with the camera on a tripod

Very sharp albumen photo depicting the brothers posing for the photograph, one drinking from a bottle, camera in the background. This image is from a recently acquired archive of Pach Brothers unmounted albumen photographs. According to the family that owned the collection, the photographs were directly from the Pach studios which were destroyed by fire in 1895.

“A dramatic fire on February 16, 1895 completely burned out the Pach studios that were located on the top floor of the buildings at 935 and 937 Broadway. An account in the New York Timess (February 17, 1895, p. 17) stated that there were thirty employees at work in the studio, and twenty patrons sitting for their portraits, when the fire started in the negative retouching room. No lives were lost, though all negatives created in the New York and the college satellite studios from the time of the firm's founding were destroyed. The brothers immediately reconstructed their premises and continued photographing from that same location for more than fifteen years.” NYU Pach Bros. Collection.