Lewis Emery Walker, Federal Photographer
Spring 2007, Vol. 39, No. 1 | Pieces of History
Lewis E. Walker is considered the first federal photographer for his work documenting the construction of the Treasury building. An album of his photographs is in Records of the Public Buildings Service, Record Group 121, series 121-TB.
A group of workers and men in suits pose before a large stone column as it is raised into place on the façade of an immense building. The row is nearly complete, and we can see that some of the columns have already received their Ionic capitals. A date written on the photograph (fittingly, on a stone) tells us that the day is September 16, 1861.
The pictured building is the extension of the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C. The massive construction project began in 1855, and in 1857 the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury embraced a relatively new technology to document its progress.
Lewis Emery Walker, a skilled and respected photographer, was hired in that year to record in pictures each stage of the project. With this commission, Walker is considered to be the first official federal government photographer.
A July 1857 payroll lists Walker as having worked 27 days at a rate of $5 a day for the month. The result of his industry over the years is a series consisting of an oversize album of 110 photographs showing how the two new wings arose from excavated pits to be the imposing neoclassical structures that still stand just east of the White House. Walker remained in the employ of the Treasury Department until 1880, the year of his death. His photographs of the project are among the earliest photographs in the National Archives still picture holdings.
In the 150 years since Walker’s hiring, federal photographers have documented the work of the government—from day-by-day progress of construction sites to the activities of the President of the United States. The photographs they have created enable us to see how people looked and lived 10, 50, or 150 years ago. Some of the photographers’ names are still familiar to us—Timothy O’Sullivan, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans—but most are not. Regardless of who the photographer was, all the images give us valuable pieces of history.