Arthur P. Yates

Arthur P Yates was a pioneer and leader in railroad photography. He was the official photographer for the New York Central Railroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He worked for the company for fifty years. Yates photographed the luxury train Twentieth Century Limited which pictures were used for promoting travel in eloquence. He developed state-of-the art instantaneous photography that had not done before that could photograph trains traveling at 60 miles per hour (97 km/h) to 90 miles per hour (140 km/h). He photographed the first train to go faster than 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), a world's speed record at the time. Yates photographed trains that were in publicity stunts and travel tours in United States and those pictures were used for advertising internationally. His nature scene pictures he captured were used in timetable brochures and travel literature around the world.

Arthur P. Yates
circa 1896
Born(1841-06-26)June 26, 1841
Schenectady, New York
DiedMay 16, 1924(1924-05-16) (aged 82)
Syracuse, New York
NationalityAmerican
OccupationPhotographer
EmployerNew York Central Railroad
Known forrailroad photography
Signature

Ancestry and early life

Yates was born on June 26, 1841, in Schenectady, New York. He was one of eight children in the family. His father Nicholas Yates was a native of Fultonville, New York, and in the furniture business up to the time of his death in 1856. His mother Harriett (Hanson) Yates was born in Jefferson County, New York. Yates's great-grandfather on his mother's side Alexander Contee Hanson was an assistant private secretary to George Washington at the time of the Revolutionary War. Yate's uncle, Joseph Christopher Yates of Schenectady, was the seventh governor of the state of New York from 1823 to 1825.[1]

Yates went to public and private elementary schools in Schenectady. He graduated from high school in the town when he was 18 years old. He started his first job at the age of 19 as a draftsman for the Schenectady Locomotive Works company. He was promoted to assistant manage of the locomotive research and development department and worked there for nearly two years. Yates then left the locomotive works company in Schenectady and went to Syracuse, New York. He arrived there on June 7, 1861. He got employment as a mechanical draftsman in the locomotive division of the New York Central Railroad. Yates was promoted to foreman of the railroad's wood and tender department until that work was transferred to Depew, New York.[2]

In 1867, Yates married Lizzie Wheeler, a daughter of Captain Wheeler of Syracuse. They had one child and named her Flora. The death of Lizzie happened on September 4, 1872. In 1878, Yates was nominated by the labor party to become the potential mayor of Syracuse. He was defeated however by the incumbent mayor James J. Belden.[3] Yates was associated with the Central City Lodge No 305 AF & AM and also of the Automobile Club of America. He is an honorary member of the National Association of Photographers and he belonged to the Fourth Presbyterian church. Yates owned a vacation residence about four miles from Syracuse and spent the winter months in the town when not traveling. He devoted his energy to the hobby of photography when not working for the railroad and built a reputation as a professional photographer.[4] He also spent time doing art and inventing.[5]

Mid life

The executives of the New York Central Railroad sometime around 1889 induced Yates to take up railroad photography as a skill and develop out that art. Yates had initially experimented in applying photography to railroading in 1887 that at the time was a new art. He experimented in photographing models, plans, and moving trains. He invented a rapid shutter that would capture a speeding mail train. In experimenting with his innovation he photographed a trotting horse that to his amazement revealed that all four feet were clear of the ground at the same time. In 1888 he was elected president of the Syracuse Camera Club.[6]

Framed picture of Kosciuszko's Garden, 1894

There were no facilities available for a photography office in the new depot of the New York Central in Syracuse, so he was first given a set rooms in the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad depot there. That company became a subsidiary of the New York Central in 1891 and the General Passenger Agent and his assistants that had previously occupied those rooms had moved out. Yates set up a studio display room and work rooms to develop negatives and make enlargements from these old depot rooms. His photographs were used worldwide in promoting New York Central tours and journeys by publicity agent George H. Daniels. Yates's nature pictures were used in New York Central's illustrated magazine Health and Pleasure and some of his photographs were made into prints that were framed and displayed in prominent places.[7][8][9] Virtually all the scenes in timetables and travel literature of the late 1800s and early 1900s used for publicity by the New York Central railroad and Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway were pictures made by Yates.[4]

Yates's made enlargements of some of his pictures and had them displayed at the 1893 Chicago's World Fair in 1893. Since that time he made railroad photography his profession doing work mostly for the New York Central railroad. He was constantly traveling over the various lines and branches of the railroad in the interest of capturing scenes and promoting the company. Yates made advertising of the railroad famous and attractive by his photography work. He made an excellent reputation for himself as a railroad photographer and was considered the finest in the field in the world in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. His pictures were also used in legal matters in a court of law as evidence of an event.[2][10]

Railroad photography

DeWitt Clinton 1831 train
Main article: DeWitt Clinton (locomotive)
DeWitt Clinton 1831 stagecoach train

Yates took this photograph of the DeWitt Clinton 1831 locomotive and train in 1893 in Syracuse. It was the first steam locomotive and train in the state of New York. It ran on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad that later on became part of the New York Central railroad system. It ran on a line between Albany and schenectady, New York. The maximum speed it could travel at was fifteen miles per hour.[11]

Yates's DeWitt Clinton historic photograph captured the first steam locomotive built for regular service in New York state. It was a non-classic design for a steam locomotive and had a set of three horse stagecoach bodies for the passenger cars. The train riders would seat inside or on the rumble seats provided on the roof of the coach. It had a flatbed carriage tender where it stored the locomotive fuel. The DeWitt Clinton was scrapped by the railroad in 1833, but a replica was made sixty years later.[12]

999 pulling Empire State Express
Main article: New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999
Empire State Express train

Yates took a famous picture of the Empire State Express going at the rate of 64 miles per hour. The photograph brought the New York Central Railroad system into distinction and endowed prestige to Yates. He made 5,000 enlargements from the negative which General Passenger Agent George H. Daniels from his promotion office of the New York Central railroad sent all around the world for advertising.[13] According to articles in several different newspapers there were potentially 200,000,000 steel engraved historical prints of the picture available by mail for every city and town in the United States in 1901. It predicted that every household in America would have a copy as well as thousands of households in Europe. It was a photogravure etching 20 inches (51 cm) by 24 inches (61 cm) printed on card stock paper suitable for framing available for fifty cents (equivalent to $16 in 2021) from Daniels at Grand Central Station in New York City.[14][15][16]

Yates also photographed the Empire State Express traveling for one mile at the world record speed of 112.5 miles per hour (181.1 km/h) on May 10, 1893.[17] The speed event was specifically designed to get people's attention on the railroad's capability to get them to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair quickly. The United States Postmaster General put out a commemorative stamp featuring locomotive 999 and the Empire State Express using Yates's picture.[18]

Twentieth Century Limited luxury train
Main article: 20th Century Limited
20th Century Limited luxury train in 1902

Yates took the photograph of the New York Central's Twentieth Century Limited train when it was going at a speed of ninety miles per hour. This meant that in every minute it traveled nearly eight thousand feet (1.5 miles) or 132 feet in every second. The driving wheels of the Central Atlantic type engine were six feet and seven inches in diameter. For every revolution of the steel wheels they had traveled twenty feet and seven inches down the railroad track. The wheels revolved six times in each second.[19]

Yates' picture of the most luxurious train in the world at the time had a reputation of being one of the fastest trains. Its long-distance record of traveling almost 1000 miles in 18 hours between New York City and Chicago had a standing among thousands of company executives each year as being able to save a business day. The expression 20th Century Limited created a new idiom in the English language worldwide and was a synonym for speed, safety, state of the art, class, prestige, perfection, comfort, magnificence, reliability and dignity.[20]

Sextuplet bicycle team races express train
Main article: Empire State Express
A race of sextuplet bicyclists with
an express train on July 28, 1896.

Yates photographed a race between a sextuplet bicycle team and the New York Central Empire State Express train going 50 miles per hour took place on July 28, 1896. The express made the regulatory scheduled 440-mile run between New York City and Buffalo, New York in a little over eight hours. The contest was set up just outside the city for a distance of a half-mile. The course was where the New York Central had a set of four parallel tracks. The bicycle path was specially prepared between two tracks by a section gang of railroad men for the bicycle race team that had practiced for the event days ahead of time on smooth country roads. The six-man bicycle had been recently developed by the E. C. Stearns & Company and called the 'Yellow Fellow'. Six employees of the bicycle company instigated the event for excitement.[4]

On the race day there were men stationed along that part of the tracks with white flags. When the train came within sight around a distant curve the bicycle team of six athletes were signaled to start peddling for the challenge. They picked up acceleration and when they were at top speed the beginning of the marked off section was upon them as was the rapid train. They were shoulder to shoulder during the half-mile competition and then each went their own way upon the targeted end. The result was that the bicycle team had been satisfied they were able to kept pace with the speeding train during this stretch of track. The large crowd of spectators there determined that it was a close event. The photograph taken by Yates of the bicyclists and train was at the beginning of the publicity stunt staged at Solvay, New York.[21]

Later life and death

Yates retired in April 1910 from being a photographer after fifty years as being an employee at New York Central. He purchased a 75-acre farm near Cleveland, New York, in which to pass his time. Yates named the farm Grand View. It had a trout stream, 120 apple trees, eighty Barlett pear trees, five acres of strawberries, three acres of raspberries, five acres of woods and was near Oneida Lake.[13] Yates died at the home of his daughter in Syracuse on May 16, 1924.[4]

See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur P. Yates.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Health and Pleasure illustrated magazine.

References
  1. Beauchamp 1908, p. 290.
  2. Beauchamp 1908, p. 291.
  3. Bruce 1896, p. 479.
  4. "The Day Local Cyclists Raced the Empire State Express". Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  5. "Artist, Inventor, and Photographer". The Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York. June 30, 1901. p. 14. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  6. YMCA 1896, p. 106.
  7. "Deer Picture". The Brooklyn Times. Brooklyn, New York. August 1, 1900. p. 7. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  8. "Handsome Work". The Brooklyn Times. Brooklyn, New York. August 2, 1900. p. 8. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  9. "Sextuplet race". The Owensboro Messenger. Owensboro, Kentucky. June 13, 1897. p. 4. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  10. YMCA 1896, pp. 106–108.
  11. Bonner 1897, p. 263.
  12. ""DeWitt Clinton" Locomotive". American Rails. 2020. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  13. "Arthur P Yates resigns from New York Central after 50 years service". The Post-Standard. Syracuse, New York. April 13, 1910. p. 7. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  14. "Two Hundred Million steel engravings". Brooklyn Life. Brooklyn, New York. October 26, 1901. p. 2. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  15. "Two Hundred Million steel engravings". Buffalo Evening News. Buffalo, New York. May 8, 1901. p. 16. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  16. "Two Hundred Million steel engravings". Buffalo Courier. Buffalo, New York. May 20, 1901. p. 5. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  17. "The fastest time on record Photo'd by A. P. Yates, Syracuse, N.Y., May 10, 1893". Library of Congress. Retrieved July 9, 2022.
  18. Holbrook 2016, p. 95.
  19. Chambers 1902, p. 432.
  20. "A New "Century" Dictionary". The New York Times. New York City. August 19, 1909. p. 4. Retrieved July 11, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
  21. Ingram 1896, p. 141.

Sources
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