Pictures That Didn’t Make The Book

Birdskins from Theodore Roosevelt’s Brazilian expedition of 1914.  He went because it was “his last chance to be a boy,” but narrowly escaped with his life.  The uncharted river the team of scientists explored was named after him.

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Is the category “Visually Speaking” an oxymoron?  At any rate, the photographs I used in The Amazing Bird Collection of Young Mr. Roosevelt were a challenge on several fronts.  First of all, there are not many available of Theodore for the time period I wrote about.  Next, there were a few for which I wanted permission, but could never quite reach the right person to get it from.  Then I had a time getting the 30+ images formatted and electronically turned over to the publisher.  It was a large file — thank goodness for some expert tech help.

I’m sharing these, which were taken by photographer Amy Griffin, for those who always want to know a little bit more of the story.  Would that be you?

Extinct passenger pigeon on display at the American Museum of Natural History.  Theodore collected one before they were endangered, and recorded it in the notebook at the top of this blog (Ectopistis migratorius).  He was probably the last person to see them in the wild, in 1907.

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Private audience with TR/Day at the Museum.

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St. Philip’s Church in Garrison, NY, where the stained glass window in memory of the Osborn children, Fred and Virginia, still quietly filters the sun’s rays.  Their parents and brothers rest in the cemetery here.

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Wing and Wing, where Theodore visited his naturalist friend, Fred.

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 Six West 57th St. in Manhattan as it looks today.  The Roosevelt family lived at this address from 1872 to 1884, but the home was razed early in the Twentieth Century.  Theodore’s teenaged friends met with him here as “The Natural History Society.”  Across the street on the former site of the Vanderbilt mansion is now the Bergdorf-Goodman department store.

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