Photo of National Soldier’s Home, Dayton, 1872

The Michael Caporale Photograph Collection consists of 356 photographs collected by Michael Caporale. The collection is close in provenance to MS 271, the Peerless Mayfield Collection. Many of the images in both collections are similar subjects and clearly come from the same sources. Users may wish to consult both collections to obtain a more complete overview of Mayfield’s photographic legacy.

Series 1 of this collection consists of photographs taken by Dayton photographer William Preston Mayfield. Images include several scenes of the Dayton Flood of 1913, advertising images, building interiors and exteriors, street scenes, and people. Building exteriors include Dayton-area landmarks such as Memorial Hall, the Montgomery County Courthouse, the Dayton Public Library and the N.C.R. company. Several other Mayfield photographs are of sports and other leisure activities such as soapbox derbies, boxing, (including a shot of Jack Dempsey), as well as magicians Harry Blackstone Sr., and Howard Thurston.

Series 2 of this collection includes a variety of examples of the work of many well known photographers dating between the 1880s and the 1970s. The images are representative of the work of these photographers and will be potentially useful as examples for the history of photography. The photographs from other artists include albumen prints featuring scenes from late nineteenth and early twentieth century England, Palestine, India, Africa, and Grenada. Also included are prints from the United States showing Yosemite, San Francisco, and other California scenes, and New Mexico.

Series 3 includes photographs copied by William Preston Mayfield including an image of the Montgomery County Courthouse under construction in the late 1840s, the National Soldiers Home in 1872, and the Flood of 1866.

Series 4 includes views by various photographers including Jesse Tarbox Beals, G. Barrie, Ruth Thorne Thompson, and Paul Briol. Also included are several oversized photographs by William Preston Mayfield. Barrie is represented by an unusual early color photograph called a “photochromie.”