These documentary photographs by an amateur photographer were taken at an unknown location-but most likely at one of the beaches around the boroughs of New York City, perhaps Coney Island. Note the ropes utilized by the children and others as a safety device.

Presented as two separate images on one gravure plate, By the Sea was re-published two years later, in 1893, in Bits of Nature: Ten Photogravures of American Scenery. Also a compilation of gravures “from nature”, this was published by Joseph Knight of Boston.