James Wallace Black photographic collection of the Boston Fire, 1872

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

James Wallace Black (1825-1896)
Born in Francestown, New Hampshire in 1825, James Wallace Black was orphaned as a teenager and moved to Boston after short stints as a millworker. He began learning the daguerreotype process at the studio of John A. Lerow in 1846. Black then worked under fellow Boston photographer John Adams Whipple starting in 1850, eventually partnering with him to create Whipple & Black that lasted between 1856 and 1859. Following this partnership, Black engaged in several short collaborations with other photographers, specializing in portraits and cartes-de-visite. During the pre-Civil War period, Black photographed several notable Americans, including John Brown and Walt Whitman, and also experimented with the concept of aerial photography, taking the first aerial photographs of Boston in 1860. Beginning in 1856, he regularly exhibited his work at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association for nearly three decades, often earning awards. Black was also active in the National Photographic Association and was a founding member of the Boston Photographic Union, later known as the Boston Photographic Association. Among some of Black’s most well-known work are his photographs documenting the aftermath of Boston’s Great Fire in 1872. In 1859, he married Frances Georgianna Sharp, daughter of the painter and lithographer William Sharp, and the couple had two surviving children: Olive P. Black, born in 1861, and Otis Fisher Black, born in 1867. James Wallace Black passed away in Cambridge, Mass., in 1896.Great Boston Fire of 1872
On the evening of November 9th, 1872, a fire started in a dry goods store in the city’s commercial district and blazed for 15 hours. The inferno flattened 65 acres of buildings and destroyed over 1,000 businesses, causing close to $73.5 million in damage (equivalent to $1.7 billion in 2023). Approximately 30 people were killed by the fire. Notable destroyed buildings included the offices of the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, the original workshop of famed jewelry firm Shreve, Crump & Low, and the original Trinity Church (located on Summer Street and built in 1735). Notably, the fire was finally contained just before it was able to reach the Old South Meeting House, which survived the conflagration. The destruction caused by the fire left a legacy on the landscape of the city of Boston, impacting the economic value of land in the financial district and leading to changes in the layout of downtown streets. The fire also resulted in changes to the city’s building fire code and fire department operations.

Sources

Pierce, Sally. Whipple and Black: Commercial Photographers in Boston. Boston Athenaeum, 1987.
"Great Fire Devastates Boston." Mass Moments, Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. www.massmoments.org/moment-details/great-fire-devastates-boston.html. Accessed 2010-05-18.
Lamunière, Michelle. "Black, James Wallace (1825-1896)." In John Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Vol. 1 (164-165). Routledge, 2008.