Photo-Illustrated Books & Photography Albums
Souvenir of Rutgers Female Institute. Class of 1860. A keepsake from New York City's first female college containing photographs of female students.
4to (266 x 228 mm). Contains 17 salt print portrait photographs, most approx. 4 3/4 x 3 3/4 in., mounted to album leaves, comprising 15 of female students and 2 of male professors. Many portraits are inscribed/signed on the overlay (contents with occasional spotting throughout, prints overall in very good to near excellent condition). Contemporary sheep, covers gilt-lettered and decorated (rebacked and edgeworn, with later ink notations on front free endpaper).
Provenance: Annie Van Glahn (name in gilt to upper cover).
Annie Van Glahn Kurtz (1842-1904) was the daughter of John Van Glahn, a prominent merchant in lower New York and one of the earliest members of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church. She attended Rutgers Female Institute from at least 1855-1860, having graduated in 1860. Following graduation, she married Charles W. Kurtz, the oldest bag manufacturer in New York City. She later served as the Secretary of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Liederkranz Society for several terms.
The Rutgers Female Institute (later Rutgers Female College) was founded on Madison Street on the lower east side of New York in 1838. In 1860, the college moved uptown to Fifth Avenue, opposite the reservoir at 42nd Street. Considered the first college for women in New York City, the Rutgers Female Institute had a curriculum that included traditional "female" studies, such as embroidery, needlework, painting, and music lessons, as well as English, philosophy, chemistry, and geology. The college closed in 1894.
This lot is located in Cincinnati.
