This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/12/2020
[Magic Shop] Seven Photographs of Clyde Powers’ New York Magic Shop. New York, 1920s. Images show the façade of this famous New York conjuring depot, its front window lettered with the text “Learn to Entertain.” Standing before the shop in the pictures are a host of well-known magicians, among them a youthful Joseph Dunninger, Nate Leipzig, James William Elliott Ted Heuber, Adrian Plate (displaying a skeleton paper tear in two pictures), and Powers himself. Each 5 x 7”. Some images under or overexposed or blurred, but likely unpublished. Powers’ shop was a meeting place for many well-known magicians in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Dai Vernon recounted sessions with Dr. Elliott in the back room of Powers’ shop, Fred Keating wrote about trying to fool Kellar on the sidewalk in front of the store (in a memorable story in the pages of The Sphinx). Many other “golden age” professionals frequented the emporium, including Guy Jarrett (who worked for Powers for a time). Powers, a theatrical manager who worked at New York’s famed Hippodrome and one-time assistant to Roltare and Ching Ling Foo, became the New York representative for the Mysto Magic Company, but never issued his own catalog of tricks. He died in 1930.