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Image Research

Tips to help researchers best access the thousands of images in the Chicago History Museum's collection

Finding digitized collections

A few collections have digital images that can be found in ARCHIE. The Rights and Reproductions Department manages the Chicago History Museum Images site. Images can be downloaded and licensed from this site.

Daily News

Images from the Daily News collection from 1902-33 are digitized and can be viewed in our online catalog ARCHIE. Each image is cataloged individually.

Street Traffic crossing the intersection of State and Madison Streets

 DN-0050752. State and Madison in 1906.

Most of the Daily News images later than 1933 are not currently accessible. However, negatives for a portion of these images are filed by individual name. Ask staff about searching the collection for you.

Chicago Sun-Times Collection

This collection consists of images produced by Chicago Sun-Times (CST) staff photographers from roughly 1940-2000. Most of the images date from 1960-2000 and have not been published. Due to the volume and complexities of this collection, CHM has published online inventories via Airtable, in lieu of a traditional finding aid, where you can browse and search the collection. Our LibGuide provides tips on searching and accessing images from this collection: https://libguides.chicagohistory.org/sun-times 

Hedrich-Blessing

These photographs, taken by the architectural photography firm Hedrich-Blessing, document the built environment in Chicago, and beyond.  They can be searched by name of the architect or client, address, town, or name of building. Some have been digitized and can be viewed in ARCHIE. Include "Hedrich" in your keyword search to limit results to photographs by this firm.

The dymaxion car at the Century of Progress. Black and white with onlooking crowd.

HB01823. The dymaxion car at the Century of Progress

Cased Images

Cased images are early photographs such as tin-types and daguerreotypes. Very sensitive to light, these images were created to be kept in small, hinged boxes, which most of them still retain. Most are images of individuals, such as the image of George Tunnicliff, below.

 Low-res images of these early photographs can be viewed on ARCHIE. A special appointment is required to see the originals.

Color photo of a cased image alongside a ruler. Casing has gold trim and a red inside cover.