Leo Goldschmidt photograph collection
Mrs Adolf Goldschmidt, Mrs. Erce Mansfeld, Mrs. Gertrude Florsheim, Mrs. Aaron Zeckendorf, and Mrs. Helen Leventhal. Photograph dated 1800s.
Collection area: Borderlands
Collection dates: 1887-1899
Photographs and related glass plate negatives, 1887-1899. The collection is comprised of photographs and related glass plate negatives of Leo Goldschmidt and family members at their Tucson residences. Goldschmidt was never married and many of his photographs are of his siblings, nieces and nephews. The collection also includes images of Goldschmidt businesses and places of interest in Tucson, such as the Eagle Milling Company, The Owl's Club, San Xavier Del Bac Mission, the University of Arizona, and panoramas and birds-eye-view of Tucson in the 1890s. There are interior views of the Eagle flour mill machinery and of the Owl's Club sitting and bedrooms. There are also views of local scenery such as Sentinel Peak, Silver Lake resort, Bear Canyon in the Catalina Mountains, and Baboquivari Peak.
This collection is part of the Southwest Jewish Archives. The Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives were founded by David A. and Leona G. Bloom, longstanding members of Tucson’s business, religious, and social service communities. The Archive serves to highlight Jewish contributions to Tucson and surrounding southwest areas. This collection was previously SJA 002. The materials were transferred to Special Collections in 1998.
Leo Goldschmidt was born September 15, 1852 in Hamburg, Germany, died January 25, 1944 in Tucson, Arizona. Goldschmidt came to the United States at the age of eighteen where he later became a successful businessman and amateur photographer.
He began his business career in New Mexico with his brother, Adolf and moved to Tucson Arizona in 1878 where he opened a furniture store that later became the furniture department of the Zeckendorf and Steinfeld department stores. In 1888, he bought the Eagle Flour Milling Company and built it into the most modern mills of its time. He was also a director of the Consolidated National Bank which later became the Valley National Bank and is now Chase Bank.
The glass plates cover a range of persons, subjects and locations including family, businesses, personal residences in the Arizona and Sonora, Mexico area. One of his four sisters, Eva, was married to Jacob Mansfeld, another pioneer in the Tucson area.
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