Dorothy Catherine Draper is a truly forgotten figure in American history. She was the first woman to ever sit for a photograph — a daguerrotype, in the year 1840, upon the rooftop of the school which would become New York University.
Catherine was the older sister of professor John William Draper, later the founder of the university’s school of medicine. The Drapers worked alongside Samuel Morse in the period following his invention of the telegraph.
The experiments of Draper and Morse, with Catherine as assistant, would set the stage for the entire history of American photography.
The legendary portrait was taken when Miss Draper was a young woman but a renewed interest in the image in the 1890s brought the now elderly matron a bit of late-in-life recognition.
To see the photograph of Draper and other early photography, visit our website.
This episode originally appeared on Greg’s podcast called The First which had a respectable run a few years ago. The feed for that show will be going away soon so we wanted to present some of that show’s greatest hits over the next few months, in between regular episodes of the Bowery Boys as bonus stories about American history. Enjoy!
#147 Art Insanity: The Armory Show of 1913
#146 Herald Square
#145 Bicycle Mania! From Velocipede to Ten-Speed
Hurricane Sandy Update
#144 Mysteries and Magicians of New York
#143 Water for New York: Croton Aqueduct
#142 New York University (NYU)
#141 New York Beer History
#140 Rockaway Beach
#139 Brooklyn Academy of Music
#138: St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery
New York City and the World of Radio
#136 High Line Walking Tour
#135 The High Line
#134 St. Patrick's Cathedral
#133 Red Hook: Brooklyn on the Waterfront
#132 Electric New York: Edison and the City Lights
#131 The First Apartment Building
#130 Haunted Histories of New York
#129 Chinatown
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