The Keystone View Company
Founded in Meadville, Pennsylvania by amateur photographer B.L. Singley, The Keystone View Company was an internationally recognized producer of stereographic images from 1892 through 1963.
The company’s origins began after French Creek flooded the city of Meadville in 1892. Singley, who photographed the damage, developed multiple prints of 30 negatives and pasted them on cardboard mounts bearing the name of Keystone View Company. By 1895 the company had issued approximately 700 different 3-D views depicting educational, comic, and sentimental steroviews, and three years later began selling its own stereoscopes.
This popular form on in-home entertainment helped the company grow quickly. By the time the Keystone View Company was incorporated in 1905, it was the largest business of its kind in the world.
While the manufacturing operations remained in Meadville, the company had branch offices in New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Toronto, Canada, and London, England. Keystone salesmen and photographers scoured the globe allowing the company to offer over 20,000 different pictorial views.
In 1963 Keystone was purchased by Mast Development Company of Davenport, Iowa. As Mast subsidiary, Keystone produced telebinoculars, eye training products and overhead projectors. In 1972 the Meadville manufacturing site was closed; however, the name of Keystone View Company continues to be used on eye training equipment today.
At the time of its closing, Keystone possessed the world’s largest collection of stereographic negatives and negative contact prints which was later donated to the University of California, Riverside where they can be found at the university’s Museum of Photography.
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About the Museum
The Johnson-Shaw Stereoscopic Museum was founded by Lance and Eric Johnson as a tribute to their family’s extensive legacy working at the Keystone View Company. In 2023, in an effort to secure its long term legacy, the Johnson’s facilitated the merger of the museum with the Historical Society. Located at 423 Chestnut Street, the museum is housed in a historic brick building with a story of its own dating back to 1856, originally built as offices for the Holland Land Company.
While the museum’s collection is primarily focused on the Keystone View Company’s story, the Johnson-Shaw Stereoscopic Museum is a lasting tribute to the stereography industry, housing materials and artifacts from other company’s as well.
Visitors can experience the history and artistry of stereoscophy through an extensive collection of stereoviews, lantern slides, historic documents, books and equipment while also learning about the manufacturing process that brought the world into people’s homes through 3-D imagry. Many of the exhibits are hands-on, allowing visitors the opportunity to view the past through photos of family and friends, landscapes, architecture, and historical events across the globe.
The museum is continually adding to its collection while building a research library as it seeks to maintain its place as an institution dedicated to providing new and previously undiscovered information to stereography enthusiasts and researchers.
Learn more about the Johnson-Shaw Stereoscopic Musuem at its website or connect with the museum through its Facebook page.
