Historic Hood River

Notes

Let’s revisit this Ella May Davidson image we first saw in 2012 to do a little detective work about cameras.  We know from Ella May’s notes her collection includes images from several of her travel companions.  The margin mentions “Helen’s Kodak” as well as “Edith” and “Ted”.  Unfortunately the notes don’t cover all her images, and the negatives were taken out of their holder so in most cases we can’t match the notes with the negatives, which limits the usefulness of the notes to images that are easily matched to their descriptions.

Fortunately old cameras often leave fingerprints of sorts on the negatives.  The first clue is the size of the negative.  There were many different film formats in the twentieth century, so you can differentiate negatives by measuring the width of the cellulose acetate or cellulose nitrate strip, as well as how much of the film was exposed in each frame.  In this case the image is roughly 4 1/4″ by 6 1/2″, which is an unusual size which only matches the “4A Folding Kodak“.

The second clue is the exact shape of the exposed image.  The film passed across a matte as it traveled from one roll to the other.  The matte shielded the edges of the film from light coming in through the shutter so the image will have distinct edges, but those mattes were rarely perfect rectangles.  This is a good example.  On the right side of this image you see the middle third of the image lacks a sharp outline.  What likely happened is that edge of the matte was bent or curled a little toward the lens, so it casts an out of focus shadow on the film.  Often you can find a nick in the matte which is reproduced on every frame, and if you drag a perfect rectangle over the image you’ll see the matte edges are not square.  Every image from this camera will be the same unique shape.

A large percentage of the Davidson negatives have the fuzzy third on the right edge, and I can match some of them to Ella May’s notes to know this was her camera.  In fact we have her notes for this one:

S-E crn 3rd & Cascade 1918/ old Bldgs- new Bldgs

I suspect she took it from her office in the Davidson Building.  I believe her date is accurate.  It matches clues like the automobiles and a sign on the Mt. Hood Hotel which says, “and New Annex”, and it is surrounded by negatives she dates to 1917, 1918, and 1919, including some with exact dates.  The Oregon Historic Sites Database gives a date of “circa 1919” for the Hood River Garage, which is the construction site in the foreground.

I notice some details I missed the first time around.  This is a nice clear view of the Gerdes Hotel, with a few details which tend to support the comments I have heard that it was more of a boarding house than a hotel.  For example, the window shades are hung haphazardly, in one case from a string.

There is a steam donkey in the foreground which appears to be powering large cement mixers which are being used to pour the foundation of the Hood River Garage (now River Daze, Artifacts, and Visit Hood River/ Chamber of Commerce offices).

This image offers a good view of the rooftop garden at the Hotel Oregon.  The architects for the recently opened Lightwell Hotel were able to use details from this image to reconstruct the rooftop wooden structure.

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