NORTON & PEEL (MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.):

The photographers responsible for the content of this collection are C. J. Hibbard, Walter Norton, and Clifford E. Peel. C. J. Hibbard arrived in Minneapolis in 1885 and soon after pursued his interest in photography, first as a hobby and then as a profession. From 1899-1903 he was the botany photographer at the University of Minnesota; later he traveled to Cuba for business and to Harvard for assignment. His specialty, though, was commercial photography. He continued his business into the 1920s before he died in 1924 and the business passed to Sarah Hibbard.

Photographers Walter Norton and Clifford Peel had both worked for C. J. Hibbard for a number of years. In his early career, Peel studied photography at school, took aerial photographs with the Army Signal Corps in WWI, and worked for a portrait photographer in Bemidji. He moved to Minneapolis in 1920 and was hired by Hibbard. Norton had briefly worked for Hibbard before joining the service during WWI. After the war he continued his job at Hibbard's Studio. After Hibbard died, they expressed interest in purchasing his studio, but were unable to at the time. In 1925, they formed Norton & Peel, Inc. and continued working in commercial photography. Three years later they bought out the Hibbard Studio, including its 75,000 negatives and equipment. For a time, they referred to themselves as the Norton, Peel & Hibbard Studio, but eventually dropped the Hibbard name. Both firms were among the best in Minnesota and had a reputation for high quality images. During their time, Norton & Peel took over 300,000 photographs, mostly in the Twin Cities metro area. They sold the firm to Robert Morse in 1965. Norton died in 1968 and Peel died in 1987.

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The inventory is organized into the following sections, there is overlap of the Negatives and Photoprints with the Collections inventories:

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Norton & Peel (Minneapolis, Minn.). Norton & Peel photograph collection. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession numbers: AV1979.73

The Minnesota Historical Society acquired a large portion of the Norton & Peel, Inc. collection in 1979 including negatives, photograph albums, and client cards. Additions were later added under the same accession number.

A substantial portion of the negatives were printed by the Minnesota Historical Society.

Processing Information:

Processed by: Nancy Devine, 2004, Jennifer Huebscher, 2009, and Karen Obermeyer-Kolb, 2017, 2020.

Catalog ID number: 002947879

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Client ledgers and cards are arranged numerically and in two series: the first series is comprised of Hibbard's negative numbers, the second series is comprised of Norton & Peel's negative numbers. Norton & Peel had started numbering their negatives at 1,000. When they acquired Hibbard's Studio, they got a set of negatives numbered through about 75,000. At this point they chose to continue with Hibbard's numbering system rather than their own. Consequently some early cards will have the same number for different negatives, but have been filed separately to avoid confusion. Many of the images represented on the cards are not in possession of the Minnesota Historical Society or have been destroyed.

The client card files are keyed to the firm's negative numbering system. The cards identify the negative, date, and for whom the image was made.

The lab book is a small binder that was originally Clifford Peel's instructions for aerial photography and map plotting during his missions in World War I. Other photo production instructions have been added as well.

The series of address cards was not created by Norton & Peel. Robert Hoag, a photographic volunteer of the Minnesota Historical Society, created an index of the images by address. The bulk are Minneapolis addresses with some St. Paul addresses and very few from Twin Cities suburbs.

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Views are mainly of building exteriors and interiors and manufactured products photographed for their business clients in Minneapolis, but also include St. Paul and Duluth. Their major clients included: Northern States Power, Dunwoody Institute, William Bros Manufacturing, Dayton's, Donaldson's, Butler Manufacturing Company, Northrup, King & Company, E.G. Staude Manufacturing Company, Minnesota Retail Hardware Association, Bemis Brothers Bag Company, Ford Motor Company, Carter-Mayhew Manufacturing Company, Automatic Control Company, and Strong-Scott Manufacturing Company. Collection also includes many views of Minneapolis, including general views of downtown, downtown and residential street scenes, churches, schools and clubhouses. Starting in the 1950s views include building development in the suburbs surrounding Minneapolis. Also includes scenic views of Minnesota's North Shore.

Negatives are inventoried in chronological order, they are shelved by the firm's negative numbering system.

Copy prints were made by the Minnesota Historical Society from the collection of original negatives and some cataloged individually.

The following list links to more detailed inventories and selected digital versions of images.

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Materials here are albums put together by C.J. Hibbard or Norton & Peel that have been cataloged separately, but are included for this inventory and listed by MNHS album number.

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Materials listed here are topical collections that have been cataloged separately, but are included for this inventory and listed by MNHS collection number.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Commercial photography -- Minnesota -- Photographs.

Manufacturing industries -- Minnesota -- Photographs.

Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Photographs.

Photographers -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis -- Photographs.

Twin Cities Metropolitan Area (Minn.) -- Photographs.

Persons:

Hibbard, C. J.

Norton, Walter

Peel, Clifford Earl, 1893-

Document Types:

Photographs.

Photograph albums.

Negatives (photographs).

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