The George S. Bolster Collection contains about 325,000 negatives of photographs taken in Saratoga Springs, New York. Most of the approximately 60,000 negatives in the photography series that George Bolster (1913–1989) called “Old Saratoga” were made between 1900 and 1960, primarily by Harry B. Settle. Other well-known photographers, such as Jesse S. Wooley, Gustave Lorey, Seneca Ray Stoddard, C.C. Cook, and H.C. Ashby are also represented in “Old Saratoga.”

Bolster’s lifetime work—wedding pictures, high school and college yearbook pictures, and photos of numerous local businesses from the 1930s through the 1980s—makes up about three fourths of the collection. “Old Saratoga” includes pictures of residential, commercial, and religious buildings; interiors and exteriors of grand and small hotels; mineral springs, bottling plants, and drinking halls; the race track; and people at work, study, and play. Aerial photographs from as early as 1929 document dramatic changes in the shape of the city over a 35-year period.