The Rosenfeld Collection

We took our son to the Maritime Aquarium today in Norwalk, CT for a fellow five-year olds birthday party. It was a sunny day with a nice breeze - pleasant for early May but might have been a bit chilly out sailing on Long Island Sound. Keeping warm to windward was not our problem today, however. Dodging kids to get a look at the seals, marveling at the playful otters and zoning out to the Jellyfish tank was more our speed. Down past the seal tank, past the Cow Nosed Rays that you could "pet" as the skimmed by in their tank was a boat building workshop. And on the wall across from the boat building workshop were a number of gorgeous black and white prints of yachts under sail from The Rosenfeld Collection. The Rosenfeld Collection - purchased in 1984 by Mystic Seaport Museum - is one of the largest archives of maritime photography in the United States. A collection of nearly one million pieces documents the period from 1881 to the present representing the evolution of photographic technology and development in the maritime industry over the last one hundred years. The collection is built on the inventory of the Morris Rosenfeld & Sons' photographic business, located in New York City from 1910 until the late 1970's.