Behind the Photographs: The Wurts Brothers Collection

The National Building Museum’s collections are estimated at more than half a million items. The largest material type (by quantity, not by size!) are photographic materials: prints, negatives, transparencies, slides, and more. The Museum’s photography collections include the corporate archives of many architectural photographers throughout the medium’s history, dating back to the 19^th century.

One of these long-spanning collections is the Wurts Brothers Photography Collection. This incredible trove documents the works of brothers Norman and Lionel Wurts, and later, of Richard Wurts, who inherited the family business from his father and uncle in the 1920s. They traveled the country on behalf of individuals, government, and corporate clients, including St. Gobain Glass, Otis Escalator, Alcoa, and more. Our staff team at the Museum preserves, describes, and digitizes this archive of fragile glass negatives, polyester-supported flexible negatives, black-and-white prints, and color transparencies.

In cataloging these images, the Collections department includes the Wurts’ own descriptions of their work as frequently as possible, assisted by a copy of their business ledger book. Much of the Wurts collection can be identified using the “Wurts Negative Number,” a unique six-digit number the Wurtses assigned to each image and scratched into the corner of the negative. This number was also recorded in the ledger book and then used to match photos to clients.

Not every page of the Wurts ledger book is legible or includes useful information. Many of the early entries are simply strings of six-digit numbers, indicating that those particular Wurts Negative Numbers had been used already and should not be reused. Sometimes the ledger book also contradicts information that the Wurtses recorded on the back of a print. In that case, the Collections department researches the contradiction and records both sets of information in the Museum’s collections database.

Like modern photographers, the Wurtses recorded interesting and helpful details on the back of their photographs, like this notation about coral water filtration systems at a hotel in Bermuda in 1940:

The handwriting on the back of the print reads: “Goldfish are kept in water tanks to eat any larva that forms in supply …  All drinking water on the islands is rain water collected from the white washed coral roofs of each house or cottage as well as any out buildings, sheds, -etc. and all draining down via stone or metal gutters and leaders to a central storage tank. In older buildings, tanks were separate and partly above ground as in this view, but in recent buildings, tanks are usually built in cellar when foundations are laid and pumps used to carry supply upstairs.”

Sometimes the details on the back of prints are more whimsical, recording the names and relations of the owners over the years and local lore about the site.

This print declares that the house depicted was built in 1753 for Oliver Wolcott Sr., a signatory to the American Declaration of Independence. At the time the photo was taken in February 1969, it was home to Mrs. Frederick W. Sherman. Additionally, the print reveals: “Story has it — Behind this house statue of King Geo. III was melted down + made into bullets to fight the British during Amer. revolution.”

But sometimes, the best information about a photograph is text included in the image itself, like this shot of a model home in Westchester County, New York.

This photo depicts a two-story brick home with a copper roof, an attached one-car garage, and a fenced-in back yard. The sign in the spacious front yard reads: “This 1936 Westchester County Model Home will be given away at the Better Homes Exposition County Center May 12th to 20th 1936. Tickets 45 [cents symbol] now on sale”.

These textual details offer additional context into the worlds these photographers depicted, revealing not just the visual scene that lay before the camera, but the oral traditions and activities of the place. The Wurts Brothers endeavored to show not only how a place looked, but also what was said about it at the time and how people interacted with the place. This fuller picture is vital to our cataloging process and the preservation of these images.