In Manhattan, the end of World War I is celebrated with ticker tape and a victory parade marching north from Bowling Green. Photo courtesy of the Staten Island Historical Society.

Alice was as at ease in the rush and clamor of Manhattan as she was in the more rural settings of' Staten Island, and her studies of the people and places she found there offer as good a record as we have of turn of the century New York. Compiling a large portfolio of "street types" (which she had copyrighted at the Library of Congress) she documented street sweepers snow cleaners, rag pickers and peddlers. She also recorded postmen, policemen, bootblacks, fishmongers, organ grinders, messengers, shoeshine boys and newsgirls. She photographed these people quite simply because she found them interesting. As she traveled throughout Manhattan, the subjects she chose for her camera included drivers of hansom cabs, the first automotive taxis, the victory parade for Admiral Dewey, the tickertape celebration at the end of World War I, and for calmer moments in photography, boating on the lake in Central Park.

Alice Austen considered herself an "amateur" in relation to her photographic pursuits. This was largely because she did not receive compensation for her work. She did send some 150 prints to the Library of Congress in Washington to be copyrighted and several of those were printed as postcards for her own personal use. One series of photographs dating from l896 (the 50 "street types" of New York City) was published as a small portfolio of photogravures by the Albertype Company of New York and may have been intended for sale. Alice's work is significant because of its high quality, its range, and its level of expression. For her the creative process was one of composition and selection which allowed her subject matter to speak for itself.

Ships passing through the Narrows were Alice Austen's favorite photographic subject. Photo courtesy of the Staten Island Historical Society.

The garden well, with the hand pump at which Alice spent so many hours washing her photographic prints and glass negatives in icy water, has long since been filled in and her tiny darkroom is now a storage closet on the upper floor. The daily marine traffic is less frenetic than it was when Alice photographed, from her front lawn, a spectacular array of ships passing through the Narrows - but the harbor is still busy with cruise ships, ferries, container ships and pleasure craft. Clear Comfort is now the Alice Austen House museum and stands as one of the first photographic museums in the United States dedicated to the work of one outstanding female photographer.