Class Photograph Albums

This series incorporates 27 albums of class photographic portraits dating between the years 1874 and 1888. Albums feature portraits of members of a given year's Northwestern University senior class, typically from the College of Liberal Arts, although all members of a class are not necessarily represented in any single volume. Also commonly found in the albums are portraits of Northwestern faculty and administrators, landscapes of Northwestern's Evanston Campus, and photographs of building exteriors and, on occasion, interiors. Photographs tend to be of standard cabinet format and dimensions. The work of many Evanston and Chicago photographers will be found in these albums. Of particular note are images made by the noted photographer Alexander Hesler. Hesler's identified work is heavily concentrated in albums 7 through 16 (representing the classes of 1877-1880) and found in more limited quantities in albums 18 (1881) and 20 through 24 (1882-1887).