Chicago Shipbuilding Company

This photograph is one of a series of glass negatives taken by Dr. Walter R. Titzel around the turn-of-the century. The photographs include images of his office, a local ship-building company on the Calumet River, and children playing on the beach at Calumet Park. Dr. Titzel practiced general medicine in Southeast Chicago for 55 years. His office was located on 10150 Ewing Avenue on the East Side. Dr. Titzel helped deliver over 5000 children in the area as evident from a birth registry dating from 1888 to 1942 that was donated to the Museum by a Titzel family member.

Dr. Titzel and his wife, Mary Davis Titzel, and three children lived on Avenue L not far from his office. Titzel had been born in Pennsylvania in 1865, and was the child of a Professor of Ancient Greek. He attended Thiel College in Greenville, PA, along with his future wife, Mary. Dr. Titzel’s oldest child, Elizabeth Titzel Riefstahl, would attend University of Chicago and later become a well-known expert in ancient Islamic art at the Brooklyn Museum.