Apr 27, 2017 - Sale 2444

Sale 2444 - Lot 104

Price Realized: $ 715
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CIVIL WAR--NAVY.) Black, James Wallace; photographer. Pair of large photographs of the Naval Academy at its temporary Newport home. Albumen prints, each about 11 x 16 inches, on photographer's printed mounts from 163 & 173 Washington Street in Boston, the second also bearing a printed caption; minor dampstaining and wear. Newport, RI, circa 1861-65

Additional Details

The United States Naval Academy was relocated to Newport, RI from 1861 to 1865, because the Annapolis campus was deemed too close to the front and was utilized as a military hospital. Classes were initially held in ramshackle Fort Adams, built in 1799 (and now the site of the Newport Folk Festival), but in September 1861 were relocated to the Atlantic Hotel. Some of the less fortunate plebes also slept and took classes aboard the USS Constitution in Newport Harbor. The earlier of these two images shows students arrayed on the grass-covered walls of Fort Adams, with the Constitution's three masts poking up behind them. The second shows them with a cannon on the lawn of the hotel.