SOUVENIR OF WATSONVILLE, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO-GRAVURES. Published by Steinhauser & Eaton, Watsonville, Cal. Brooklyn, N. Y. The Albertype Co., n.d. [1890s]. 12.7x18 cm (oblong octavo), pp. [1-2: title leaf], 15 plates, 1 folded, publisher's pictorial wrappers, ribbon tied. First edition. An album of photographic views of Watsonville, a city located in southern Santa Cruz County in the Monterey Bay area of coastal central California. The town was laid out by John H. Watson and D. S. Gregory in 1852. The community was incorporated as the Town of Watsonville on or about March 30, 1868. The Watsonville region (the Pajaro Valley) was and is a major center of California agribusiness, known for its apples and strawberries. Brothers Adolph and Herman Wittemann founded the Albertype Company, a publisher of souvenir view books and postcards, in 1887. The company used the recent technological innovation of the collotype, or albertype, to photomechanically reproduce images. Amassing photographic negatives of towns and cities across the United States, the Albertype Company produced over twenty-five thousand collotypes before its closure in 1952. The Albertype Co. produced an earlier photographic souvenir of nearby Santa Cruz with photographs probably taken by Adolph Wittemann. Not in Rocq. Gift inscription dated 1907 on the title page. Mild wear and creasing to overlapping edges of wrappers, a very good copy. OCLC records copies at University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University. (#173007).
Price: $375.00
No statement of printing.