Otto Hillig – Catskills Photographer

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Boarding House

This vintage real photo postcard of a boarding house with a family on the porch was mailed from the village of Liberty. The photograph was taken by Otto Hillig. The postmark on the reverse side shows that it was mailed in 1911.

Otto Hillig can be considered one of the great photographers in Catskills history. Arriving from Germany in the United States as a poor teenage immigrant he took on a series of odd jobs before developing a prosperous photography business at his adopted hometown in the village of Liberty in Sullivan County, New York. He operated a well-regarded portrait studio in the village, extensively photographed the landscapes of the region and was considered an earlier pioneer of aerial photography.