C.M. Bell Studio

07/25/2026

In 1869, Bell and Brother photographed Washington’s newly completed Franklin School, in what is believed to be the first photograph ever taken of the building. Designed by Adolf Cluss, it rose above an unpaved K Street like a palace of public education, with towers, enormous windows, and classrooms filled with light and air. Washington has grown around it, but Franklin School still stands. This photograph preserves the moment when it was new, nearly alone, and full of promise.

07/23/2026

In the C.M. Bell Studio logbooks, the entry is brief: Miss Crozier.
But the glass plate tells us more.

Here is Athline Martha Crozier, photographed in Washington at the turn of the century, when the capital was a city of presidents, senators, drawing rooms, calling cards, and young women entering society. Born in 1886, the daughter of Hugh Vaughn Crozier and Sallie Green Crozier, Athline sat before Bell’s camera between 1903 and 1905. In one portrait, she wears the grand portrait hat of the age, wide-brimmed, dark, and dramatic. In another, she appears in white, composed and direct. In the third, there is the faintest smile.

These were not snapshots. They were introductions. Soon after, in 1906, Athline Crozier became Mrs. George Thomas Brannan.

More than a century later, Bell’s camera gives her back to us, not as a name in a register, but as a presence, a young woman of Washington society, poised between the old century and the new.

07/20/2026

In the C.M. Bell Studio, three boys stand dressed for the sea. Their collars are striped, their boots polished, anchors set proudly at their throats. It was no accident. After the Spanish-American War, the Navy had moved to the center of the American imagination. The names of Manila Bay, Santiago, Dewey, and the Maine were still fresh in the national mind.

07/16/2026

07/14/2026

Another mystery from the C. M. Bell Studio may be solved. This portrait, labeled “Hon. E. Adams,” bears a striking resemblance to George Everett Adams, Civil War veteran, Harvard graduate, and U.S. Congressman. Every identified face brings another chapter of American history back into focus.

06/29/2026

Two hundred years ago this week, America lost two of its greatest founders on the same day. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once allies, then rivals, then friends again, both died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. History rarely writes a more remarkable ending.

06/24/2026

Lincoln’s Refuge_ The Soldiers’ Home Through the Lens of Bell & Brother (1867). Perched on a hill above Washington, the Soldiers’ Home served as a refuge for aging and wounded veterans long before the creation of the VA. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln found peace on these grounds, walking among soldiers whose sacrifices helped preserve the Union. This 1867 Bell & Brother photograph captures a place of healing, memory, and national renewal.     

06/11/2026

Mr. and Mrs. J. Poole before the lens of Charles Milton Bell. A Treasury Department professional and a wife who embodied the Gibson Girl ideal of turn-of-the-century America. Together, they capture a Washington balancing Victorian tradition with the promise of a new century.

06/02/2026

In C. M. Bell’s Washington studio, the portraits of Mrs. H. T. Adams and a younger Adams generation illustrate Alexander Graham Bell’s (no relation)belief that glass plate photography could preserve not only faces, but the inherited family traits and resemblances that linked one generation to the next.