The stone observatory on the Bloody lane is now finished and ready for visitors. The view from this point alone is worth a visit to the famous Bloody lane as you can take in the entire right to the left nearly four miles. There will be, when all planted, nearly four hundred markers, giving one a good idea of the entire battle field with the advantage of the good roads. Every body ought to visit it and make a study of this great battle.
One thing I missed
Submitted by StephenRecker on Thu, 06/06/2013 - 11:26am
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.
About
Hello. I'm Stephen Recker and welcome to my blog. In it I will be discussing the different projects I am working on related to the American Civil War with a focus on photography related to the battle of Antietam. I am particularly interested in how the battlefield has been interpreted throughout the years. I will be discussing how it was done then and how new technologies can be brought to bear to bring life to those old materials as well as new ones. See the 99 Places Every Antietam Battlefield Guide Should Know.
Sharpsburg Items
Antietam Valley Record
Thursday, September 5, 1895