07/20/2026
I am always gratified by the response when I post vintage photos from Chateaugay’s past. Yesterday’s images of Chateaugay before and after the paving of Main Street around 1912 were no exception. Thank you.
People often ask how many old Chateaugay photographs are still out there waiting to be rediscovered. There are probably many more—long forgotten in attics, closets and any of the myriad of other places where people set things aside and then forget about them.
I know “what if” is never a winning game to play, but let’s do it anyway.
Wednesday August 10, 1899. Seems like a totally random date, but that day was when our chances of seeing many, many more views of Chateaugay during the 19th century plummeted.
Overnight on that date, a fire began that would totally incinerate the photographic files of two long-serving local photographers: A.B. (Albert Bringham) Buell and A.E. (Alfred E.) Holmes. Holmes had succeeded Buell and had acquired Buell’s entire archive of images. Together, they took thousands of Chateaugay photos from the mid-1870s until the fateful fire. How many of those from that 25-year period will we ever see? Very few, I fear.
The Buell and Holmes photos we have today are just those that customers had purchased and saved. I suspect that most of those images that were in the hands of customers have been lost or discarded. What remains is all we now have of those once very extensive libraries of images.
In any event, we will continue to collect and share the images that are out there.
Below is a description of the August 1899 fire that I put together about 10 years ago. Also shown are photos of Buell, Holmes, a photo of a street sprinkler with the Buell/Holmes studio in the background and last, a photo of the building that sat where the parking lot of St. Patrick’s Church is today. The glass walls and ceiling of the studio can be seen in each of the last two photos.
