Finding Aids

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. Harry Richmond Hippler (1875-1958) was a pharmacist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an avid amateur photographer. This collection contains negatives primarily of Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) train cars, both interior and exterior views. There are also images of train tracks, bridges, construction and other railroad related images. The bulk of the photographs date from the 1910s through the 1940s. It is possible that Harry R. Hippler was the photographer of some of the photographs in the collection.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives and photographic copy prints which were made directly from the negatives. The images document an array of subjects, though the majority of the images are of locomotives, railroad cars, railroad stations, and other railroad infrastructure. Various landscape and cityscape photographs are also included. Where it is possible to identify the locations, the majority of images document sites in Pennsylvania, though photographs of sites in New York state and Ontario are also present.