Collections Highlight: Wurts Brothers Photography

The National Building Museum acquired the Wurts Brothers Photography Collection in 1983, making it one of the Museum’s earliest collections. At that time, the Museum had only recently been established by an Act of Congress, and the Museum would not open to the public for two more years. Even in these formative stages, photography was an important collecting priority for the Museum to showcase the building arts. This emphasis reflects the long relationship between photography and architecture, as some of the earliest surviving photographs in the world depict the built environment.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French pioneer often credited as a forefather of architectural photography, exemplifies this connection. Around 1827, he created a pewter plate heliograph from his second-story window, capturing the surrounding buildings and rooftops. This image is recognized as the oldest known permanent photographic print.

Continuing this tradition almost seventy years later, brothers Norman and Lionel Wurts established a photography studio in New York City in 1894. They used large-format glass plate negatives to capture their surroundings and developed positive prints for architects, developers, contractors, and manufacturers in the area. Norman was the photographer in the family, while Lionel took on the studio work and responsibility for managing the business.

In the 1920s, a second generation took up the family business, and Lionel’s son Richard joined his uncle behind the lens. Over the next several decades, the Wurts Brothers traded fragile and heavy glass plates for plastic-supported negatives, which were more convenient and easier to use. Alongside the development of photography as a medium, the Wurts Brothers also experimented with prints, testing a variety of methods to produce an image. Below, see three different versions of the same image:

Richard Wurts expanded the business beyond the commercial needs of New York’s growing building industry, eventually moving the studio to Connecticut. Throughout the 20th century, Richard traveled the country for a national clientele, including Cass Gilbert, Otis Elevator, and Alcoa, documenting trends and developments in the built environment throughout the nation and, eventually, the world.

Though primarily documentary in nature, the company’s images garnered widespread appeal and were commissioned for circulation in magazines, print advertisements, promotional brochures, and postcards. These images helped shape popular perceptions about contemporary architecture right up until Richard shuttered the business in 1979.

When it was time to move their business archive to a new home, Richard and his wife Geraldine split the collection into two gifts. All photography relating to the five boroughs of New York City were donated to the Museum of the City of New York, while the National Building Museum received everything else. Both collections are digitized and accessible online. The Museum’s Wurts Brothers collection totals nearly 27,000 items, including paper prints, polyester negatives, glass negatives, and transparencies, as well as materials from the Wurts Brothers’ business archive, such as notes, receipts, brochures, advertisements, maps, and other ephemera.

To conduct research using the Wurts Brothers Photography Collection, please fill out a Research Request Form. You can learn more about other collections held at the Museum by searching the online database here!