#philadelphiahistory

The Stevens-Cogdell/Sanders-Venning Collection contains several 19th- and 20th-century portrait photographs of members of the extended Black families descended from the relationship of Richard Codgell, South Carolina merchant and enslaver, and Sarah Sanders, an enslaved woman in his household. The portraits embody an anti-racist, counter archive to contemporaneous collections of racist imagery and caricatures.

Probably a Black family member or friend took this snapshot in the backyard of the residence of Miranda Cogdell Venning, granddaughter of Sarah Sanders. There is both a formalness and candidness to the sitters’ mannerisms in this image taken at the family home. Miranda, probably the woman seated on the hammock, was the first African American graduate of the Philadelphia Girls High School and Normal School. A school principal, she died of tuberculosis one year after this view was taken. She was thirty-eight years old.

M. C. V., June 1899, Venning’s Yard, [1116 Fitzwater Street]. Cyanotype. Stevens-Cogdell/Sanders-Venning Collection.

The acquisition of 151 watercolor views of Philadelphia by Benjamin R. Evans was the first significant acquisition by the Graphic Arts Department.

Commissioned by antiquarian Ferdinand Dreer, Evans created many drawings on site and based others on photographs or earlier artwork. Evans’s views focused on small shops and modest buildings, like Enoch’s Variety Theatre, rather than city landmarks and portrayed a world far neater and homogeneous than the actual city.

Benjamin Ridgway Evans, East Side of Seventh Below Arch, 1883. Watercolor. Purchase 1975.

Traffic might be a mess, but at least the sunset is nice!

Market Street, East of Sixth Street, early 1900s.