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Seeger Studio negatives
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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
David Seeger (1890-1961) was a photographer active from the 1910s to the 1950s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, especially in the neighborhoods of Manayunk and Roxborough, where his studio, Seeger Studio was located. In addition to photographing landscapes and buildings in Philadelphia, Seeger also captured images of car accidents for insurance companies and took several school portraits and other photographs for neighborhood schools.
Seeger was born in England in 1890 and immigrated to the United States in 1904. He met and married Rose Sandler and they settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They had three children, Etta, Lena, and Jeannette. Rose passed away in 1938 and in 1939, Seeger married Ida Blank, to whom he remained married until his death in 1961.
Seeger worked as a photographer at the Commercial Museum in Philadelphia before opening his own studio around 1920: Seeger Studio at 4384 Main Street in Manayunk. Later, he moved his studio to 6070 Ridge Avenue, located in the adjacent neighborhood of Roxborough. Locally famous, he was prolific in producing images of Manayunk, Roxborough, and nearby areas.
Bibliography:
Nickels, Thom. Images of America: Manayunk. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001. Page 60. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=ezWxqPUHz2wC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. "Description: Seeger Studio photonegatives, 1933-1965." 2014. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://discover.hsp.org/Record/hsp.ead.at01-3490/Description.
This collection consists of over 350 photographic negatives, circa 1920-1940, taken by David Seeger and Seeger Studio. They document a variety of businesses in the Manayunk and Roxborough area that employed him, such as Roxborough High School, real estate companies, funeral homes, and insurance companies. The negatives also contain some non-commissioned local images taken by Seeger. The images in the collection depict damaged automobiles; people (groups, individuals, and families); school clubs and organizations, sports teams, functions, and performances; buildings (interiors and exteriors, some showing damage), residences, and property; landscape and street scenery; industrial machinery; and other subjects.
An item-level inventory is available on-site. The Philadelphia History Museum may own objects associated with this collection.
Gift of Anne Marie Petka, 1990 (accessions 90.18 and 90.27)
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.
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- 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.