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!
#320 Hart Island: The Loneliest Place in New York
#319 The Tale of Charging Bull and Fearless Girl
#318 Moonstruck: That's Amore!
#317 Vaccinated: New York and the Polio Outbreak
#316 Jenny Lind at Castle Garden
#315 Abandoned Pantheon: The Hall of Fame for Great Americans
#314 Tillie Hart - The Holdout of London Terrace
#313 The Straw Hat Riots of 1922
#312 Has Jack the Ripper Come to Town? A Gilded Age Hysteria
#311 Uprising: The Shirtwaist Strike of 1909
#310 1918: The Harlem Hellfighters
#309 What Gets Saved? Landmarks & Historic Districts Explained
#308 Andrew Carnegie and New York's Public Libraries
#307 The Holland Tunnel: The Wonder of the Jazz Age
#306 Just Desserts: The Origins of New York Cheesecake, Cannoli and More
#305 Christmas in New York: The Lights of Dyker Heights
#304 The Miracle on Eldridge Street
#303 Building Stuyvesant Town: A Mid-Century Controversy
#302 Gangs of New York (Bowery Boys Movie Club)
#301 Haunted Houses of Old New York
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