- The Harris Pierce Photograph Collection spans the period from 1888-1900 and contains 300 gelatin silver photographs of residences and businesses during the grading and improvement of streets in the Bronx. Little is known about Harris Pierce, but his stamp appears on the verso of the photographs and gives his address as 1921 Oostdorp Ave and his profession as 'Photographer'. Trow's New York City Directory lists his profession from 1883-1908 as 'Stenographer' at various addresses on Nassau Street, with his home in the West Farms area of the Bronx. The photographs appear to have been made as evidence in supporting the cases of claimants filing for damages against the city. They include views of the construction of sewers, construction sites, street improvements and grading, residences, vegetable gardens, children, churches, and businesses such as grocery stores, brewers and liquor stores, bakers, barbers, plumbers, and real estate offices. The photographs also include views of the New York Central Harlem Line and train stations such as the Tremont Station, social clubs such as the Suburban Club, the Artistic Bronze Co., the American Pie Baking Co., and stables and feed stores. Gift of Herbert Berger-Hershkowitz, 6 July 2007; gift of Leo Hershkowitz, 2008.
- The James Reuel Smith Springs and Wells Photograph Collection includes 852 glass negatives, acetate negatives, and photographic prints relating to his book "Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century," published by the New-York Historical Society in 1938. Smith was born in 1852 in Skaneateles, New York. Family money enabled him to actively pursue his hobby of photographing and investigating springs and wells. He spent much of the years 1897 to 1901 bicycling around northern Manhattan and the Bronx looking for them and photographing them. His enthusiasm was well-matched with his photographic eye and his meticulous note-taking on the locations and conditions of the springs and wells he saw. He died in 1935.
- 4,670 images by George Ehler Stonebridge (d. 1941), an amateur photographer who lived and worked in the Bronx, New York. The photographs document both everyday life and special events such as parades, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning decades of the twentieth century. The collection includes views of Manhattan sights as wells as Bronx parks, the Croton Dam strike, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the funeral of General Franz Sigel, the Dewey Naval and Land Parade, Niagara Falls, the May Walk (1898-1899), the Cycle Parade (1897-1898), wrecks, fires, the Sportsman's Show, the Stevens airship, baseball teams in action, scenes from Garrison, N.Y., and grim photographs of the victims of the "General Slocum" steamboat disaster.
- The 904 glass plate and film negatives in this collection were taken by Drucker & Baltes for the General Outdoor Advertising Company, a billboard company that was formed in 1925 through the merger of the Fulton Group and Thomas Cusack Company. The photographs record the advertisers who bought billboard space at thirteen sites in Manhattan and two sites in the Bronx. The views focus on signs but also show surrounding buildings, elevated railroads, and street activity at such heavily traveled intersections as Broadway and Seventh Avenue (Times Square), Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, Sixth Avenue at 27th Street, Eight Avenue at 110th Street, 125th Street in Harlem, and Third Avenue at 166th Street in the Bronx. The same sites appear repeatedly, sometimes monthly, during the 1920s and into the Great Depression. The photographs reveal changes in both the neighborhoods and in the advertising for many products, among them Chesterfield cigarettes, Wrigley's chewing gum, and Pepsodent toothpaste.