This collection consists of two photograph albums that once belonged to Henry Fairfield Osborn. The first volume (19cm x 26cm), which has the title "Russia 1898" imprinted in gold on the front cover, contains 124 photographs (each 8.5cm square) taken in cities such as Paris, France; Cologne, Dresden, and Munich, Germany; St. Petersburg, and Moscow, Russia; five loose items, including a cyanotype and a view of the Eiffel Tower, are laid into the front cover. The pictures from Russia are mostly scenes of everyday city life, often showing local residents and horse-drawn vehicles. Some of the pictures from Germany show an outdoor market in a city square. One group of images was taken along a lake or river in a mountainous region, and another at a zoo; a man poses next to a hippopotamus's open mouth in two of the images. Visible landmarks include Cologne Cathedral (Cologne), a statue of Friedrich Wilhelm III in Heumarkt Square (Cologne), Kreuzkirche (Dresden), The Bronze Horseman (St. Petersburg), Kazan Cathedral (St. Petersburg), the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (Moscow), the Cathedral of the Annunciation (Moscow), Spasskaya Tower (Moscow), the Kremlin (Moscow), the Isartor (Munich), and the Glyptothek (Munich).
The second volume (29cm x 38cm) has the titles "Photographs" and "Colorado 1899" imprinted on its front cover, the latter in gold. The 269 photographic prints, often mounted five or nine to a page, are scenes from a camping trip showing mountainous and wooded landscapes, camp and campers, and travelers on horseback. One group of photographs features a woman on horseback, and another group shows the head of a buck, complete with antlers. Two images show lightning strikes against a dark background. Henry David Osborn appears in at least one photograph--at the head of a group eating outdoors.
Henry Fairfield Osborn was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, on August 8, 1857, the son of William Henry Osborn and Virginia Reed Sturges. After graduating from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1877, he continued to study biology and zoology, earning a doctorate from his alma mater in 1881. Osborn taught at the college until 1891, when he helped establish a biology department at Columbia University and simultaneously became a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. From 1908-1933 he was president of the AMNH, where he oversaw significant growth, particularly of the institution's collections of fossils; he also served for a time as a vertebrate paleontologist for the United States Geological Survey. His primary research interest was evolutionary biology and he published many works on the subject throughout his career. Osborn and his wife, Lucretia Perry, married in 1881 and had five children. Henry Fairfield Osborn died in Garrison, New York, on November 6, 1935.
