Magic lantern

Check out this strange and wonderful nighttime glimpse of Grand Army Plaza in 1901! This lantern slide now on eBay has so much going for it: those moonglow lamps, the Arch with only one side of the sculptural grouping installed (and a crane of some sort still visible on the left), and best of all, a dapper fellow in boater and cane, apparently serenading a pot of geraniums.


The fact that the park qualified as a subject for the "magic lantern," a distant weird ancestor of cinema and TV, attests to its status as a world-class tourist attraction in the late 19th and early 20th century, as I learned here:

The invention of photography enabled the inexpensive creation and reproduction of slides, and thereby greatly expanded the repertoire of available images. Slide shows would feature famous landmarks, foreign lands, and personages. Posed photographs were sold in series, telling uplifting stories and moral tales. Though there was a huge market for these lanterns and slides in the 19th century, they eventually fell out of favour after the invention of moving pictures, and the few surviving lanterns and slides are sought-after collectors' items.

I won't be bidding on this one (trying to rein in my eBay friskiness lately), so feel free.