One thing I missed

When my book Rare Images of Antietam came out I went through the usual period of anxiety when I expected a crowd of people with torches and pikes to come to my door and drive me out of town for writing such a huge tome of lies and misinformation. Well, it seems I got most of the facts correct, so far at least, exclusive of a few typos. But there was one thing that I got a bit wrong.


On page 12 I included a picture of the building on the "NE Corner Public Square in Hagerstown" that I represented in the book as where E.M. Recher had his studio, starting in the 1850s. It turns out that a few decades ago the original building was torn down and this one was put in its place. It is a great copy of the original, but not the original. Oh, well.

To rub salt on the would, John Frye, an incredible historian whom I have the pleasure of chatting with on many of my lunch hours, recently went through the files of his Western Maryland Room and put together an entire folder of images of the original building. I will be posting those soon once I organize and edit them.

In the mean time I found this image in the archives of the Baltimore Sun. It is from 1982 and is the best close-up I have seen that shows the dilapidated state of the building. It depresses me to think that I probably drove by this building years ago and did not stop. But at least I can see what it looked like and I can correct the record.