Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Archival Athletes

From the Musee McCord Museum Archives, here are some terrific photographs of individual and team sports from the turn of the (past) century.  I love reprinting images of historical athletes as evidence of a time when athletic prowess was conflated with a snappy, well tailored presentation for the camera.  Here, in the McCord image set, both male and female athletes wear sporting garb that could easily double as street clothing.  I long for the days when heraldic emblems, plus fours, bowler hats, wool knits and striped tunics were de rigeur elements of the the amateur sporting uniform.

 John Lowe, 1931

  
 Frank Barnwell, 1891

Louis Rubenstein, 1893

  
 Rowing Crew, 1871

 
Fencers, 1925

  
 "Bonnie Lassies" group, 1891

Hurdle race on snowshoes, 1892

Trafagler Basketball Institute, 1928

 
 YWCA Water Polo Team, 1925

Bank of Montreal Hockey Team, 1895

 Kahnawake Lacrosse, 1867

Wesleyan Thelogical Basketball Team, 1916

Physical Education Hockey Group, 1925

2 comments:

buy athletic polo said...

These are really an awesome collection of photographs of some archival athletes.I always willing to get these types of creative information.This is really an impressive stuff for me.

Spalding said...

Wow these are awesome and so much the History of my home, The Traf girls uniforms were the same in the 1980's, the Snowshoe racer is from the MAA once a private athletic club and the winner of the first Stanley Cup (and why the winged wheel symbol is so ubiquitous in Hockey), but the best by far is the group of First Nation Canadian Lacrosse players from the Kahnawake reserve...