Underwood & Underwood

Underwood & Underwood, American stereographic company. In 1880, the brothers Elmer (1860-1947) and Bert (1862-1943) Underwood founded a firm in Ottowa, Kansas, to distribute stereos by Charles Bierstadt, the Littleton View Co., and J. F. Jarvis. The head office moved to New York in 1891, and the firm began buying and making as well as distributing pictures; by 1901 it was producing 25, 000 stereos a day and 300, 000 stereoscopes a year. It also began to market boxed sets of pictures on religious, educational, and travel themes. From 1896 news photographs became an increasingly important part of the business, with war, from the Graeco-Turkish conflict (1897) to the First World War, a particular speciality. Manufacture of stereos and lantern slides ceased in 1921, and the brothers retired in 1925. The stereo negatives and rights were sold to Keystone, which published them with a ‘V’ prefix. In 1931 the firm was split into four separate entities.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Darrah, W. C., The World of Stereographs (1977)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Underwood & Underwood was an early producer and distributor of stereoscopic and other photographic images, and later was a pioneer in the field of news-bureau photography.

The company was founded in 1882 in Ottawa, Kansas, by two brothers, Elmer Underwood (born Fulton County, Illinois 1859 - died St. Petersburg, Florida 1947) and Bert Underwood (1862 - 1943). They moved to Baltimore and then to New York City in 1891.

In 1920, the company sold most of its catalog of stereographs to the Keystone View Company. In 1924-1925 Underwood & Underwood took the first vertically controlled aerial photographs of the new cities of Miami and Miami Beach. Approximately 400 images were taken showing the final phase of the first building boom which then collapsed shortly after when the Great Hurricane of 1926 destroyed both locations. The quality of the images was superb for the day and rival modern aerials in detail due to the low altitude of the aircraft taking them. Little else is known about this aspect of the company's work.

The company ceased business in the 1940s.

References

^[1]

1. ^ P.W. Harlem,1979. Aerial photographic interpretation of the historical changes in northern Biscayne Bay, Florida 1925-1976. University of Miami Sea Grant Publication No. 40. http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/cgi-bin/copyright.cgi?http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/miau/miaut79002/miaut79002index.html

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