Long-lost photographs capture Dubuque history in 1912

History buffs in the Dubuque area should check out a pair of books that trace a century of Dubuque history.

In 1912, one of the most popular ways for photographers to make a living was to travel the country and offer their services to anyone they found.

So it was when at least two photographers arrived in Dubuque.

For about three weeks, they documented the city’s workers and industries, and left behind negatives for approximately 500 photographs of Dubuque as it was in the spring of 1912.

The photographers’ identities remain a mystery. But their photographs make up the Klauer Collection, donated to Loras College by William J. Klauer, Sr.

In 2012, 100 years after the pictures were taken, a photographer set out to recreate the photos to the best of his ability with similar equipment, visiting as close to the same locations as he could. That project was called “A City at Work: 1912 and 2012,” two books now for sale from Loras College Press.

Tim Olson, the photographer who worked alongside the Center for Dubuque History at Loras College, said it was a fascinating experience that involved a lot of research and some creative workarounds to locate the original 1912 sites. That’s where modern technology came in.

“In one case, we were able to read the phone number that was pasted on to a telephone. Then you can look in a directory,” Olson said. “It’s kind of amazing what we could find just from zooming in on these on the photographs.”

The plate-glass negatives didn’t have captions. But when they were discovered in the 1960s, enough people who had been in Dubuque at the time they were taken were still around and able to identify people and places in the Klauer photographs.

In the collection, the photographs also have serial numbers which helps identify locations which were near each other, even if they don’t exist anymore.

“I did try to find the places that were photographed in in 1912. But I also just looked for places that were disappearing in 2012,” Olson said. “They did a lot of photographs in a brewery and, really, it’s now kind of just a falling-down building. And I tried and tried to get in there, and I just couldn’t get access to it. And now that building is probably even too dangerous to go in, because it is really just falling apart.”

That brewery was Dubuque Brewing & Malting Company, which had its grand opening in May 1896.

The photographers visited a variety of businesses in Dubuque, some of which still exist, like the Adams Company, which manufactures parts, and Dubuque Mattress Company. Olson was able to revisit those easily.

But the photographers also captured bars, cafes, barber shops, small businesses, and office buildings, as well as the people who worked in those industries. Those were harder to recapture a century later.

Many of the original buildings have been demolished since 1912, or they’ve been renovated into buildings for private companies or apartment complexes.

“Most of these photographs are interior photographs,” Olson said. “So if the buildings are there, the interiors have been changed quite a bit. Like our city hall. It’s an old building and it was definitely around in 1912, but when I went in there to photograph, it was just really difficult to find the spaces.”

Olson said there is a city bus station that operated out of a building that once belonged to a trolley company, and that was some of the closest they were able to find. Otherwise, buildings that remained unchanged have largely been abandoned.

And yet, the photographs can still provide a connection.

“They would just photograph an entire room,” Olson said. “And when you zoom through that, it is kind of the closest you’ll be able to get to going back in that room and snooping around.”

Some were incredibly detailed, too, so when they were enhanced, objects on the subjects’ desks or crumpled on the floor were visible—sometimes enough to be readable. And because of technology in 1912, those details wouldn’t have shown up in the original prints.

The fact that so many of the original plates were intact and preserved is another thing that makes the collection special.

“But now, you know, just because of the way they did it, we can really look at these photographs in ways they probably never dreamed of,” Olson said.