Sixth plate ambrotype depicting a full-frontal exterior view of the Charlotteville Seminary building, a large institutional structure set against a wooded hillside. The building’s long façade features a central cupola and symmetrical wings with regularly spaced windows, showing the scale and formal architecture of a mid-19th-century educational institution. The photographic process is ambrotype on glass, identified by the deep tonal range and surface depth characteristic of wet plate collodion, and the format is sixth plate, typical of mid-19th-century architectural views.

Charlotteville Seminary, located in the hamlet of Charlotteville in Schoharie County, New York, was an important Methodist-affiliated school founded in 1850 and continued through the 19th century. The building portrayed here was widely documented in period prints and engravings but was destroyed by fire in 1867, aligning the architectural style and ambrotype medium with a circa 1850s–1860s date of origin.

The image is housed behind an ornate gilt brass mat within its period case, preserving the original presentation. No photographer’s imprint or additional inscriptions are visible on the plate itself. This ambrotype is a compelling architectural record of a lost 19th-century American institution, offering both documentary value and visual presence typical of early architectural photography.