Object ID
2009.3.2.4
Object Name
Photograph
Medium
Stereoscopic
Object Entities
Object Description
Stereoscope Slide. Writing on left states "Underwood & Underwood, Publishers. New York, London, Toronto-Canada, Ottawa-Kansas"; Writing on right states "Works and Studios ~ Arlington, N.J. Westwood, N.J."; Writing on bottom states "(4)-2372- The Acropolis of Athens, Lykabettos and Royal Palace, from Philopappos monument. Copyright 1907 by Underwood & Underwood. U-85030"

Sepia toned slide of adult woman in white long sleeved dress standing next to a young boy on a hill with the Acropolis in the distant background.

Writing on the back:
That temple-crowned height over opposite where you stand is the most famous hill in Europe. Modern Athens is, for the most part, at the farther (north) side of the Acropolis. That large square building at the right, below and beyond the Acroplis, is the Royal Palace. Beyond the city you can see the sharp cone of Lycabettos (it is a long-extinct volcano) with the little chapel of St. George a-top. The Acropolis was in oldest times a citadel, protectig the town whose houses clustered below it. Twenty-four centuries ago Pisistratus made it splendid with temples, but these were destroyed by the Persians under Xerxes, 480 B.C. It was after Themistocles had defeated the Persians at Salamis (ten miles away behind you) and when the country was once more safe and serence, that Pericles built of Pentelic marble the Parthenon up there on the height, a thank-offering to Athene. It was finished about 438 B.C. Over ar the north (left) of the Parthenon you can see part of the Erechtheion and other remains of old splendor. Part of the once magnificent Propylaea, the state approach to the shrings, you can see at the extreme west (left) end of the height.
In the latter days of Roman dominion here (6th cent. A.D.) Justinian made the Acropolis once more a military citadel. In the fourteenth century the Florentines captured it; then a Venetian duke held it till 1458, when it was surrendered to the Turks. In 1687, during a war between the Turks and the Venetians, an explosion ruined that most beautiful building in the whole world, the Parthenon., and reduced it to what you see now, a fragment of time-yellowed marbles a pathetically nomble remnant of the best art-creation of the old Greek civilization. In 1833, after the victorious close of the Greek struggle for independence, the Turks finally abandoned the ground; it belongs now to Greece and to the world.
From Notes of Travel, No. 6, copyrighted, 1901, by Underwood & Underwood."

"The Acropolis, the Glory of Ancient Athens." Translated into 6 languages.
Origin
Stereoscopes first became popular in the U.S. in the 1860s and 1870s when Oliver Wendell Holmes created a more economical viewer than what was previously available. A second wave of popularity of the device came about in the 1880s-1910s when the availability grew. Of the three major producers of the device, Underwood & Underwood was one of the leading in the country, producing over 25,000 images per day and around 300 million stereographs between 1854 and 1920. The devices were sold for $6 each, making it a popular item among middle class consumers.
(Retrieved from http://xroads.virgina.edu/~MA03/staples/stereo/stereographs.html)

Underwood & Underwood was an early producer and distributor of Stereoscopic and other photographic images, and later was a pioneer in the field of news-bureau photography. The company was founded in 1882 in Ottawa, Kansas by two brothers, Elmer Underwood (born in Fulton County, Illinois 1859- died St. Petersburg, Florida in 1947) and Bert Underwood (1862-1943). They moved to Baltimore and then to New York City in 1891. In 1920, the company sold most of its catalog of stereographs to the Keystone View Company. The company ceased business in the 1940s.
(Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwood_26%_Underwood)
Rights and Reproduction
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Citation
Photograph, National Hellenic Museum, https://collections.nationalhellenicmuseum.org/Detail/objects/3511. Accessed 03/28/24.