author

Julius Wilcox

A journalist, amateur photographer, and co-author of a detailed 1898 bicycle guide, he left behind a vivid record of New York in the late nineteenth century. His surviving work is especially remembered for cyanotypes that captured both city architecture and everyday street life.

1 Audiobook

The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories

The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories

by Alex Schwalbach, Julius Wilcox

About the author

Born in Vermont in 1837, he later studied at Middlebury College before moving to New York City at about age 29. There he worked as a writer for the New York Evening Gazette, covering fashion and society, and eventually settled in Brooklyn.

Alongside his writing, he became known for photography, apparently as a serious hobby rather than his main profession. His surviving images, many made in the 1880s and 1890s, focus on Manhattan and Brooklyn and range from churches, bridges, and streetscapes to scenes of working-class life and poverty. Much of this work survives as cyanotypes with his handwritten captions and is now preserved by the Brooklyn Public Library.

He also co-wrote The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories with Alexander Schwalbach, a practical 1898 book drawn from articles written for The Commercial Advertiser. After the death of his wife, he spent his later years in lodgings on Columbia Heights, where he died in 1924 at age 87.