Original 1914 Panama Canal Photo Album with a Typed SIGNED Letter from Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Panama, Jamaica, Cuba, New York, March-May 1914. Thick oblong (8" x 5.5") string-tied album in limp black cloth boards with "Photographs" in gilt lettering. 109 original photographs (most 3.5" x 5", many captioned in white ink), 11 clipped news articles by MacWethy, and 13 pieces of ephemera, including postcards, the passenger list of the ship Prinz Sigismund, and a typed letter SIGNED BY Franklin Delano Roosevelt and dated February 19, 1914 on his letterhead as the Assistant Secretary to the Navy. VG overall (large ring-stain to front cover not affecting contents, news clippings toned, and minor wear to contents and album).
A fascinating photo album and scrapbook compiled by New York newspaperman Lou D. MacWethy (1871-1962) who was editor of the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News. In 1914, he had formed a newspaper syndicate for which he wrote a series of articles on his travels through the Caribbean to the Panama Canal, all of which have been meticulously preserved here along with original photographs taken during his journey. He titled the series "A Country Editor in Panama: Strange Lands and People Met on a Voyage to the Isthmus as Recorded by the Editor of a Weekly Paper." The Panama Canal officially opened on August 15, 1914.
The album opens with a short letter signed by Roosevelt to MacWethy, providing him with a letter of introduction to Major Boggs, head of the Isthmian Canal Commission headquartered in Washington, DC, to be passed along to Colonel Goethals, "as well as a copy of the Major's letter transmitting the same to me. You will note that he asks that the information contained in his letter be not made public and, of course, I know that you will treat it as confidential." MacWethy did not include those letters in his album.
The album mostly depicts his adventures in chronological order, with snapshots taken from the ship the Prinz Sigismund, which sailed from New York to Colon in February 1914. Photographs also include stops in Santiago in Cuba (MacWethy writes "Santago"), Port Limon in Costa Rica, and a longer stay in Kingston, Jamaica, where he documents the damage that still remained from the devastating 1907 earthquake, including an image of himself standing among the ruins as well as those of the Jewish Synagogue and Superior Court.
The images in Colon, Panama, include shots of local children in front of their school, hospital grounds, a brewery in the Panama Canal zone, torpedo boats in the Canal, the artificial Gatun Lake, as well as the graves of the workmen who helped complete the Canal. He writes of the canal in one of his articles, "the illustration of the human stomach with the alimentary canal and the duodenum attached. The stomach part is Gatun lake, the great artificial body of water bottled up in the interior of the isthmus."
A wonderfully-rich album from the months prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, which is back in the news in 2025 with the U.S. government expressing its desire to "reclaim" it, some 110 years later. Item #1279
Price: $3,000.00