?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(LAND OFFICE) Group of 14 photographs relating to the homesteading period in Kansas, in particular the savvy business practices of John Keernan ("The Land Man"), of Goodland, Kansas, and its environs. With bowler-hatted businessmen posing next to fields of hay, corn, and melon; haystacks alongside a Model T; well-dressed family members posing in harvested fields; a laborer picking apples; a large and extended family group of well-dressed settlers; and scenes of the office itself (which was fitted with healthy specimens of grain and vegetables). Silver prints, 6x8 inches (15.2x20.3 cm.), on the original mounts, with captions, in pencil, on mount verso. 1912
Once the American frontier had officially vanished (in 1890), the Midwest was open to mass homesteading. Americans understood the economic importance of land west of the Mississippi River, and clever businessmen promoted land sales and settlements. Goodland, Kansas, which was first settled in 1887, was close enough to Chicago to be an attractive site. Agriculture was the main source of prosperity, and the fertile flat land easy to cultivate.
The John Keernan Real Estate Company hired commercial photographers to take shots of the office as well as prospective properties while photographs of abundant crops signified a settler's sure success.
