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Twentyfive Ton Passenger Engine. Lawrence Machine Shop Lawrence Mass.
Boston: S. W. Chandler & Co.s Lith. 204 Washn. St., [c. 1855]. Drawn by A. Lederle; Arranged by Charles Hastings. Chromolithograph, 20.125” x 36.5” plus margins. A marvelous large folio chromolithograph of a locomotive built by the Lawrence Machine Shop of Lawrence, Massachusetts. This striking print pictures the engine itself, in all its ingenious splendor, as well as its tender, loaded with wood, with an attendant posing jauntily at the car’s edge. Locomotive manufacturer advertisements such as this are among the most appealing examples of American chromolithography, combining intricate mechanical draftsmanship with crisply printed colors.
Built in 1846, the Lawrence Machine Shop in Lawrence, Mass. was modeled after machine shops in Lowell, Mass. and Manchester, New Hampshire which built all the textile and power machinery necessary for local mills and produced equipment for sale elsewhere. In addition to providing textile machinery to mills in the Merrimack Valley, the Lawrence Machine Shop also produced heavy machinery such as locomotives and fire engines, and manufactured sewing machines, steam fire engines, and textile and paper-making machinery. In 1848, the Machine Shop began receiving power from the newly completed Lawrence Dam. A victim of overproduction based on speculation rather than concrete orders, the Machine Shop dangerously overextended itself. Suffering during the panic of 1857, its property was sold and by 1860 the complex was turned into a cotton mill. The company published at least three advertising lithographs—the present one as well as a view of the company’s factory buildings, entitled Lawrence Machine Shop, Lawrence, Mass., J.H.W. Page, treasurer… (1855) and Lawrence Machine Shop, Lawrence, Mass., Passenger Engine, 22 Tons (ca. 1856), both of which were lithographed by L. H. Bradford & Co. of Boston.
Gordon M. McKay, noted here as Agent, was a machinist-entrepreneur who trained as a civil engineer and worked on railroads as well as the Erie Canal. In 1852, McKay became general manager of Lawrence Machine Shop. The company manufactured his own patented steam engine (used as a power source at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1853) as well as the printing presses McKay invented. Following his investigation into shoemaking in pursuit of an improved pegging machine, McKay won the rights to an innovative patent and entered the shoemaking business. During the Civil War, he secured federal contracts for soldiers' footwear. By 1862, he delivered some 150,000 pairs of shoes to troops, and appears to have sold at least 470,000 pairs over the course of the war.
Samuel Ward Chandler (1803–1900) and his brother John Greene Chandler (1815–1879) hailed from Petersham, Mass. While John was the artist, Samuel appears to have been the businessman, having graduated from Harvard in 1822 and worked as a customs inspector in Boston from 1844 until around 1853. John is listed as an engraver as early as 1835, and from 1836 to 1839 he partnered with the wood engravers Edward Wright and Richard P. Mallory. After 1839, John was self-employed as a designer and wood engraver, and in 1853 partnered with Samuel in the printing business. Identifying themselves as successors to the Boston lithographers B. W. Thayer & Co., S. W. Chandler & Bro. (also operating as S. W. Chandler & Co.) boasted a prolific output, advertising “Designing & engraving on stone, copper, steel and wood, of public and private buildings, stores, locomotives and machinery.” Portraiture was a speciality; their most noted commissions were the large bust and half-length portraits made for Charles H. Brainard's Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (Boston: 1844, 1855). The subjects included various notables (such as politicians and businessmen), and were mostly copied from daguerreotypes by John A. Whipple, J. Vannerson, et al., and were drawn on stone by Leopold Grozelier, whose wife, Sarah A. Peters Grozelier (1821–1907), also drew for Chandler & Bros. A good portion of the firm's work is anonymous.
The artist, A. Lederle, is not listed in any of the standard references and was likely a mechanical draftsman working for the Lawrence Machine Shop.
A most handsome locomotive chromolithograph.
REFERENCES: Thomson, Ross. “The Continuity of Innovation: The Civil War Experience.” Enterprise & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press: 2010), pp. 128-165; Wright, Helena E., “The Image Makers: The Role of the Graphic Arts in Industrialization” in The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol. 12, No. 2, (Society for Industrial Archeology: 1986), pp. 5-18; Pierce, Sally and Catharina Slautterback. Boston Lithography, 1825-1880 (Boston, 1991), pp. 132-33.
CONDITION: Very good, margins extended with some repairs to printed border, expert reinforcement on verso.
Item #6047
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