Fifty Photographs: selections from SCUA collections

Old Main Street, Deerfield, Mass.

Title

Old Main Street, Deerfield, Mass.

Creator

Allen, Frances S. (Frances Stebbins), 1854-1941

Contributor

Allen, Mary E. (Mary Electa), 1858-1941

Date

ca.1910

Extent

1 photograph

Description

Part of a movement to make New England quaint again, the Allen sisters were talented photographers based in Deerfield, Mass. Having taken up the craft in the 1880s, the sisters became key figures within the region's thriving arts and crafts movement. The Allens were skilled photographers with a pronounced pictorialist aesthetic, and their images -- a nostalgic mix of rural lanes and colonial homes with interior scenes in which neighbors enacted the past clad in colonial garb -- caught on in a burgeoning market for tourism to colonial sites.

Collection:

Allen Sisters Collection (MS 001)

Identifier

muph001-b001-i009

Cite As:

Deerfield Street. Photo by Frances and Mary Allen ca. 1910. Allen Sisters Photograph Album (MS 001)