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Karl F. Lutz photographs and papers
Notifications
Held at: Philadelphia History Museum [Contact Us]15 South 7th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Philadelphia History Museum. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Karl Frederick Lutz was born in Heidelberg, Germany on June 3, 1896. He came to the United States around 1927 and began working professionally as a photographer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the 1930s. Lutz's photographic subjects were mainly Philadelphia buildings and scenery. Many of his photographs were used for postcards. He married Barbara "Betty" Goldbrunner, another German immigrant, in 1935. Barbara died in 1949 from ovarian cancer. Karl passed away in 1976.
This collection consists primarily of photographs in a variety of media - paper prints, postcards, holiday greeting cards, film negatives, glass plate negatives and others - but also includes a small number of pamphlets, booklets, maps, and other materials. The collection mostly relates to historic sites, buildings, landmarks, and other tourist images in Philadelphia and other nearby areas, but general street scenes of no particular historical significance are also captured. Several scrapbooks with photographs, postcards, and some newspaper clippings, as well as a few personal papers are also present in the collection, such as Lutz's and his wife's war rationing coupon books and an emergency medication authorization for alcohol from 1926.
An item level inventory of this collection is available on-site.
Gifts of Russell C. and Herta B. Spruance, 1988 (accession 88.7), Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 1984 (accession 84.9), and Martha E. Von Rosenstiel and Elliot R. Borgman, 1989 (accession 89.13)
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Philadelphia History Museum directly for more information.
People
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Philadelphia History Museum
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Sarah Leu through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Philadelphia History Museum for information about accessing this collection.