This collotype printed in cyan ink depicts the 1889 Montreal Ice Palace.

The following description of 19th Century Montreal Ice Palaces is courtesy of the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network:

The heyday of the Montreal Ice Palace was between 1883 and 1889. These complex structures were erected in the then Dominion Square, now Place du Canada, in the then up and coming business district in downtown Montreal.

The first Ice Palace, that of 1883, was designed by architect A. C. Hutchinson, an expert in stone construction who had experience working on the new Christ Church Cathedral (corner of University and Ste. Catherine ) at only 19 years of age. Later he would go on to work on the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. However, Hutchinson took his ephemeral ice buildings as seriously as his still extant important structures in stone.

The ice was cut in 500-pound blocks, mostly from the St. Lawrence River and possibly from the Lachine Canal – an easier, and smoother source. From the prints and photos, we can see that these Ice Palaces were huge – most over 100 feet high – and had all the complex turrets and battlements of a real palace. They were, of course, in the popular Neo-Gothic style so loved by the Victorians. This pseudo-medieval architecture was reflective of the imperial mentality of the age and flourished most strongly in British, and British-influenced, countries. Montreal also had the added cultural inheritance of the French château – although somewhat a severe Norman version, more suited to our climate (winter again!) like the Château Ramesay.

The Ice Palaces were only one part of the Montreal Winter Carnivals. There were sleigh rides, snowshoe races (the many Montreal snowshoe clubs sponsored the Carnivals) and toboggan slides. There was an especially frightening toboggan slide that went down Place Jacques Cartier out on to the river, and several on Mount Royal. Tourists came in great numbers, mainly from the United States, to participate. The Winter Carnivals were economic boons as well as entertainment for the locals.

The highlight of the Carnival was the storming of the Ice Palace by the snowshoe clubs on the last evening of events. The Palace was “attacked” with fireworks by the snowshoers. According to contemporary reports, this was a very impressive spectacle.

Although there were attempts to continue building Ice Palaces on and off after the 1880s, some at Fletcher’s Field (Parc Jeanne Mance), nothing on the same scale seemed to endure. We still have winter festivals and Quebec City has its Ice Hotel, but the glittering palaces of the Victorians have melted away like all the snows of yesteryear.—Sandra Stock, Ice Palaces of Montreal

Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical

“Within the covers of Sun and Shade…We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases,”—Ernest Edwards, president & publisher, 1889

In July, 1888, the first issue of Sun & Shade: A Photographic Record of Events, was published in New York City by The Photo-Gravure Company. Essentially a high-class art periodical, each issue featured eight or more beautiful hand-pulled photogravures as well as plates printed in photogelatine, (collotype) and halftone. These were collected within a stapled, folio-sized magazine issued monthly.  The subject matter included the work of leading amateur and professional photographers, as well as works of art—many from the galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The December issue—Christmas themed—featured a specially designed cover printed in green ink.  Success was swift. The first issue sold 1000 copies “in a fortnight”. (1.) Within the first year, Sun & Shade quickly increased circulation to 4000 copies a month. With a public demand for reprinting earlier issues, this success lead to a rebranding, after which, beginning with the September, 1889 issue, the magazine was renamed Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical. The final issue was March, 1896, when financial issues to the parent company, spurred by the eventual May, 1896 bankruptcy of the N.Y. Photo-Gravure Company, forced its closure.

Sun & Shade would become the ultimate statement of the many skills and inquisitive mind of Englishman Ernest Edwards. (1836-1903) Essentially his own printed passion project, the magazine was fueled by his ongoing love of photography in the field (issues featured many plates by him over the years) and a deeply scientific mind which pushed the advancement of the state of photo-mechanical reproduction and fine printing.

The son of a clergyman from Bloomsbury in London, he initially made a name for himself taking photographic portraits of eminent people in his Baker Street gallery. (Charles Darwin sat for him several times) His love of the outdoors also bore fruit and he became an accomplished alpine photographer. But his real interest centered around photo-mechanical reproduction. In 1869, he took out a patent in England for his own rudimentary collotype process called heliotype. In the Fall of 1872, he moved across the pond along with his wife Charlotte, and became superintendent of Boston’s Heliotype Printing Company after selling the American rights to American publisher James Ripley Osgood. (1836–1892) Edwards ran the Heliotype Printing Co. there until the end of 1884. The following year the James R. Osgood & Co. went bankrupt, although not a result of the heliotype division.

Growing restless in Boston, he then moved to New York City, where he established a new firm in March, 1885: The Photo-Gravure Company, (subsequently renamed The New York Photo-Gravure Company) with offices in Manhattan and a leased printing factory in Brooklyn. In 1887, his company received perhaps the one commission it’s best known for today: the printing of  781 collotypes, which Edwards called photogelatine plates, making up the monumental publication:

Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885, with the landmark sequenced motion study photographs taken by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. 

Restructured in 1891 as the New York Photogravure Co., Ernest Edwards continued to advance the state of photo-mechanical printing during his final decade, with Sun & Shade publishing some of the earliest examples of his own invention by 1894: plates printed in a three-color process called chrome-gelatine, a variation of his heliotype process.

Quality Rather than Quantity

Even though it survived less than eight years in print, describing Sun & Shade in Ernest Edward’s own words is perhaps the best posterity for this important photographic periodical with an artistic heart. One year after its’ debut, he wrote the following, published in The Photographic Times for August 2, 1889:

“A year ago we commenced the publication of our novel venture in journalism Sun and Shade, a Picture Periodical without letterpress, almost as an experiment, with a modest list of less than fifty subscribers. To-day we are printing an edition of 4,000 copies monthly. A sufficiently convincing proof of the wisdom of our hope that there was room for us.

“In our rapid growth the wish has been indicated unmistakably for the higher grade of pictures, and of the higher class–always for quality rather than quantity. Following rather than leading such a wish, we feel that we make no mistake in marking the future career of the magazine to be rather that of an artistic periodical than a photographic record of events.

*Our efforts shall be directed in the future to make Sun and Shade an artistic periodical which shall be not only pleasing but educational in its broadest sense, Some of our plans may be briefly referred to.

“We shall reproduce the leading pictures in the great collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within the covers of Sun and Shade will be found from time to time, reproductions of the works of American artists. We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases, And we shall supplement these special features with examples of sculpture, architecture, and industrial art. If in the future we receive as hearty a response to our efforts as we have received in the past, our task will be indeed pleasant and our road to success a royal one.” (p. 394)

1. Notice: Sun & Shade: October, 1888. The August and September issues did not appear.