3

de Young discovers and restores glass negatives of old photos from Lands End


Billington brothers and friend inside Sutro Baths, c. 1900

Recently, the team at the de Young Museum came across a stash of over seventy glass plate negatives in their basement, all depicting scenes from Land’s End and old San Francisco. The images are over 100 years old.

The negatives were sent to the paper conservation lab at the Legion of Honor for cleaning and restoration – you can get all the nitty gritty details about the work at the de Young’s blog.

The project brought to light some really interesting photos, including one of the foundation of the first Cliff House before it was built.

The photos were taken by photographers (and brothers) W.C.and J.R. Billington. “The Billingtons owned several studios during this time, most notably the Sutro Heights Gallery at the Land’s End Parapet, where they sold specialty views of Seal Rocks, Land’s End and the Golden Gate,” wrote the de Young.

I hope all of these negatives see the light of day in a future exhibition! As they said on their blog, “It couldn’t be more fitting that the negatives produced at Land’s End were conserved over one hundred years later, only a mile away at the Legion of Honor.”

Sarah B.


Cliff House from Parapet, Sutro Heights, c. 1900 (positive 2012)

3 Comments

  1. Oooh I wish they’d reveal the other negatives too! That first photo is epic!

  2. what a fabulous photo — to think that they found 100! But it makes me unspeakably sad to think that I was never able to see Adolph Sutro’s grand house (now Sutro Heights Park) or the Sutro Baths. So beautiful, so elegant — people had such enormous pride in their (our) city!

Comments are closed.