On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
[Coaling Tower]
Not on view
Bluntly descriptive to the point of banality, this straightforward photograph shows a structure that is anything but. The rambling assemblage of chutes and ladders seems impossibly wonky, yet its design follows the calculating logic of commerce. Built as service stations for steam-powered trains, such towers housed belts and pulleys for heaving coal into lofty storage tanks until railcars rolled in to fill up with fuel. Ever larger trains required taller towers, so haphazard extensions shot up over time. The complex system is simply rendered in cyanotype—a popular process for documenting industry. Requiring no darkroom or silver salts, it offered working photographers a quick and crisp means of making images with minimal fuss.
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![[Coaling Tower], Unknown (American), Cyanotype](/Rodan/dist/svg/rolling-0.9s-30px.svg)
