Broadway at Fulton Street, New York City

View of west side Broadway, from Fulton Street to Dey Street, looking southwest from the old Barnum's American Museum. Illustration published in the Barnum's American Museum Illustrated, 1850. Source: Library of Congress. Continue below...

This is an illustration posted by the Mathew B. Brady's National Gallery of Daguerreotypes, located on two buildings at 205 & 207 Broadway, corner of Fulton Street. Daguerreotype is and early name for photograph that became popular in the 1850s. The name honors the French artist and inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851). The Brady's Gallery of Daguerreotypes. The gallery of free admission showed daguerreotypes (then a recent technology) of eminent persons of the time. The building included facilities for the production of of portraits by the "Daguerrean art". The technique was also used to make copies of paintings and engravings.

The Franklin House is on the left, on the corner of Dey Street, was built in the 1830s and demolished in 1873 to make was for the Western Union Telegraph Building.