THOUSAND ISLAND PARK — When Thomas L. French decided to document some Thousand Islands history, he entered a different dimension.
His book “River Views: A History of the Thousand Islands in 3-D” contains a little more than 100 stereocards from the 1870s to 1880s.
Stereocards use the “stereoscopy” technique which creates the illusion of depth in a picture by presenting two slightly offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these two-dimensional offset images are then combined in the brain, with the help of a special viewer, to give the perception of three dimensions.
Mr. French, Potsdam, and his mother, Nellie Taylor, a third-generation Thousand Island Park resident, have been collecting stereocards for about 15 years. One day, Mr. French came across some images of Thousand Island Park loaned to his mother, curator of the Thousand Island Park Museum.
“I had never seen Thousand Island Park in 3-D like that,” he said. “Some of the images revealed things that had been lost to time.”
Thousand Island Park, on the south tip of Wellesley Island, was established in 1875 as a Methodist summer camp. It is now a private historic community of Victorian-style homes. Mr. French grew up there.
Its residents are close-knit, evidenced when a car pulled up in front of the porch of the Wellesley Hotel and Restaurant, where Mr. French was on its porch, talking to a reporter. The driver rolled down a window and shouted her accolades about “River Views” to Mr. French.
“You make it seem like you are kind of back there,” Trude Brown Fitelson told him. “It's just a wonderful book; an important document.”
People can find 3-D everywhere now, from living room televisions to handheld game consoles. But in their day, stereocards fascinated a nation. Mr. French, an English teacher at Massena's J.W. Leary Jr. High School, said the viewer, necessary to see the stereocard images in 3-D, was devised in the early 1860s. “In the next decade, almost every household had one,” he said. “It was like the television of the day.”
A 3-D foldable viewer comes with “River Views,” tucked away in its back flap.” The book includes images of more than Thousand Island Park. There're also shots of the Alexandria Bay area, various islands and private summer camps. Activities recorded range from steamer excursions to a balloon ascension. Many of the images were dispersed around the country and Mr. French went on a treasure hunt via Internet searches and online auction sites to bring the images back home.
He paid from $5 to more than $200 for images, part of the overall “significant investment” to publish the sharp, well-designed, self-financed book.
“There are serious collectors out there collecting very specific places, specific photographers or events,” Mr. French said.
Most of the photos in the book are by noted 19th century photographer A.C. McIntyre, the “first photographer of the 1000 Islands.” Chapter one opens with a photo of President Ulysses S. Grant's 1872 visit to the Thousand Islands. The shot is attributed to Mr. McIntyre, but Mr. French writes that it could have been taken by the Bain Brothers, based in Clayton.
In the photo, President Grant is seated on the ground with a gentleman and in the background there are scores of ladies and a few tents. Mr. French said 3-D viewers slightly magnify images, and that, combined with the 3-D effect, can cause features not seen in two dimensions to reveal themselves. For example, graffiti can be seen in tree bark and a huge fork and a spoon oddly hanging off a branch look even more out of place in 3-D.
“When you put the viewer on and you look at any of these pictures, usually something pops out that you never noticed before,” Mr. French said.
Mr. French is trying to uncover a mystery in one of the images. It's of a “sanatorium” on Thousand Island Park he thinks was taken “pre-1885.”
“This is a perfect example of something that was completely lost and unknown to history,” Mr. French said.
He doesn't think the building was like the one established in Tupper Lake in 1885 for tuberculosis patients, but rather may have been some sort of infirmary or health resort. Regardless, the building, now the site of a volleyball court at Thousand Island Park, was destroyed by fire in 1890.
“Maybe we'll find something later on, like a document or another picture that will give us a better idea,” Mr. French said.
Many buildings come back to life in the book, but Mr. French's favorite shots are of people.
“You see these expressions on people's faces,” he said. “These people left us a connection, even though they weren't necessarily aware that was what they were doing. It was all a very new medium.”
Mr. French can still find details he may have missed before in some images.
“Sometimes it's somebody hiding behind a tree, or sometimes it's people in the windows in a building in the background,” he said.
Depending on how “River Views” sells, there could be more people and places uncovered in 3-D. Mr. French's collection of stereocards recently grew when he acquired dozens from a collector. Many of the images feature 19th century Clayton.
