Byron Company

American photography studio, active New York, established 1888, dissolved 1942.
American, (active 1888–1942)
In 1888, Byron Company was established in New York City, New York, by Joseph Byron, a photographer who had just emigrated from the United Kingdom in that same year. Previously, he had worked for Byron Company, a firm started by his grandfather in Nottingham-on-Trent, England, in 1844. The exact connection between the English and American firms is unknown. He was assisted at the New York City firm by his wife and five children including Percy C. Byron who would also become a photographer and partner in the firm. After 1891, the firm specialized in theatre photography by Joseph Byron, and after the First World War, photographs of shipping and ships in the New York Harbour taken by Percy C. Byron. In 1899, stock photographs of daily life in New York City by Byron Company were used to illustrate a book by E. Idell Zeisloft entitled "The New Metropolis". In 1923, upon the death of Joseph Byron, his son Percy took over the firm and managed it until 1942 when he closed the business and donated the archive to the Museum of the City of New York.