He Was Handed Life on a Platter…

Havard Barrett was the youngest of a large family and a popular figure around town. His brothers and sisters worked hard in their bakery to finance a photo studio for their brother. It had the best location in West Chester on High and Gay Streets and even featured an elevator to reach the third floor. Something quite unique in 1899! They financed his photographic equipment making him ready to go into business. Havard Barrett had been handed everything he needed for success on a silver platter….

…All except for the right attitude. The path of the embezzler and con man was far easier to travel than to apply himself behind the camera and in the darkroom. His biography tells the tale of his attempted easy road to fortune, which spanned across three states. You can read it here.

Looking east on Gay Street, from High Street, West Chester, PA, during West Chester’s Centennial in 1899. Photographer unidentified. Courtesy of Chester County History Center, West Chester, PA.

What I find most interesting is this photograph taken of Barrett’s studio at the southeast corner of High and Gay Streets in West Chester. What caught my eye was the huge skylight on the third floor. This gallery provided terrific lighting for portrait work. Also, at the little window facing High Street, a contact printing frame is barely visible on a shelf. Quick proofs may have been printed in the sunlight here. Barrett had a fantastic setup!

This building made quite a transformation through its lifetime. Today, looking at the two-story serpentine stone structure you would never know that it had been four stories at one time. It began its life as a two-story store – and was well-known through period photographs as Thomas C. Hogue’s Store. Later the third and fourth floors were added which morphed into a structure known around town as the “bonnet”. A fire swept those top stories away in 1980 and they were not replaced.