Before Trick-or-Treating: Lewis Reed’s Photographs Capture Halloween in Early Montgomery County
Homemade masks, autumn parties, practical jokes and an eerie clown on horseback reveal how Marylanders celebrated Halloween more than a century ago.
Long before Montgomery County neighborhoods filled with porch lights, plastic pumpkins and children carrying bags of candy, Halloween had a very different look.
There were no inflatable ghosts covering front lawns. Costumes were more likely to be assembled at home than purchased in a store. And the familiar ritual of children traveling door to door calling “trick or treat” had not yet become the centerpiece of the holiday.
Fortunately, we can still catch glimpses of that earlier Halloween.
Among the many photographs taken by Lewis Reed of Montgomery County, Maryland, are several remarkable images associated with Halloween celebrations of the early 20th century. Reed is better known locally as the founder of Reed Brothers Dodge in Rockville, but long before and throughout his years in business, he was also an enthusiastic photographer who recorded the people, places and everyday life around him.
His Halloween photographs open a small window onto a holiday that was still evolving into the celebration we recognize today.
A Mask Was Sometimes All You Needed
Halloween preparations, circa 1914. These women pose with homemade masks for an upcoming celebration. Photograph by Lewis Reed.
One of Reed’s photographs, dating to about 1914, shows women holding simple masks in preparation for Halloween. To modern eyes, the scene may hardly look like “costumes” at all. That is precisely what makes the photograph so interesting.
Early 20th-century Halloween celebrations retained much of the atmosphere of the masquerade. Revelers might wear ordinary clothing accompanied by a mask, hat or other homemade disguise rather than dress from head to toe as a recognizable character. Manufactured Halloween costumes became increasingly available during the following decades.
The photograph captures that transition almost perfectly: familiar people made mysterious for an evening by little more than a mask.
It also reminds us how much of Halloween once depended upon imagination rather than merchandise.
Halloween Was a Social Occasion
Family and friends gathered for a Halloween celebration more than a century ago. The homemade masks and disguises give the photograph an unmistakably eerie quality. Photograph by Lewis Reed.
Another Reed photograph preserves a Halloween gathering from roughly the same period.
The faces, masks and unusual assortment of hats can look surprisingly unsettling today. But Halloween parties were popular social occasions, particularly among teenagers and adults.
Period newspaper accounts describe homes decorated with autumn leaves, flowers, lanterns and orange-and-black decorations. Games might be followed by music and dancing, often with plenty of refreshments before the evening ended. Contemporary Halloween menus included familiar seasonal favorites such as pumpkin pie and molasses cookies, alongside dishes that would seem decidedly less familiar today.
The emphasis was on gathering together.
Halloween was not yet overwhelmingly a children’s holiday. Historical accounts of the period note that modern door-to-door trick-or-treating had not become the dominant American custom it would later become.
Newspapers Help Fill in What the Camera Could Not
Lewis Reed’s photographs freeze individual moments, but newspapers from the same years help bring the scenes to life.
Stores advertised masks, costumes and masquerade supplies as Halloween approached. Society columns reported parties and sometimes even identified the guests who attended them. Recipes appeared for Halloween refreshments.
And then there were the warnings.
The Evening Star, October 31, 1916
Because Halloween had another longstanding tradition: mischief.
Young revelers were expected to engage in a certain amount of harmless trouble, but communities did not always agree about what qualified as harmless.
An October 31, 1916 edition of The Evening Star, for example, carried warnings concerning Halloween pranks. Among the activities attracting unwanted attention was the practice of throwing flour.
Imagine answering your front door on Halloween evening and receiving a handful of flour instead of handing out a miniature candy bar.
The past can seem very distant until a newspaper reports exactly what people were worried about on an ordinary Tuesday night.
From Mischief to Community Celebration
As the new century progressed, communities increasingly tried to channel Halloween mischief into organized entertainment.
Parties, civic events and parades offered a way to turn Halloween into a community occasion rather than an evening of overturned objects, practical jokes and property damage. By the 1920s, Halloween was gradually assuming more of the organized, public character that would help shape later celebrations.
And somewhere along the way, Lewis Reed pointed his camera at one of the strangest Halloween figures in his collection.
The Clown on Horseback
A masked clown wearing dark glasses rides horseback during an early Halloween parade or celebration. The location is unknown. Photograph by Lewis Reed.
Few historic photographs require as little explanation as this one.
A clown sits astride a horse.
He wears an elaborate costume, an oversized collar, a pointed hat and round dark glasses.
More than a century after the shutter clicked, the photograph somehow manages to be humorous, theatrical and just a little unnerving at the same time.
Unfortunately, the location has not been identified. But that uncertainty is part of the fascination of working with a historic photograph collection. Not every image arrives with a caption. Sometimes the photograph survives while the names, date and circumstances slowly disappear.
What remains is the moment itself.
And in this case, it is a wonderfully peculiar piece of Halloween history.
Lewis Reed’s Camera Preserved Everyday History
Lewis Reed did not photograph only important ceremonies or prominent citizens. His camera also recorded farms, roads, automobiles, businesses, family gatherings, community events and seemingly ordinary moments throughout Montgomery County.
That breadth is what makes his photographs so valuable today.
A picture of several people preparing masks for a party probably did not seem historically significant when the photograph was made. Neither did a group posing at a Halloween gathering.
But more than a century later, such photographs allow us to study things that official histories rarely preserve: what people wore, how they entertained themselves, what their homes looked like and how traditions changed from one generation to the next.
Montgomery History today uses Lewis Reed photographs in interpreting the county’s early 20th-century past, including images documenting major community events and institutions.
Even Reed’s seasonal photographs extend beyond Halloween. One surviving image shows men gathering pumpkins in Thomas Kelley’s field near Pleasant Hills in the Darnestown area during the early 1900s, preserving another small piece of Montgomery County’s autumn past.
Men gathering pumpkins in Thomas Kelley’s field near Pleasant Hills in the Darnestown area, early 1900s. Lewis Reed’s photographs preserved not only community celebrations, but also the seasonal traditions of everyday life in Montgomery County. Photograph by Lewis Reed.
Halloween Changes. Photographs Remain.
Halloween has changed enormously since Lewis Reed raised his camera more than a century ago.
Masks became full costumes. Homemade disguises gave way to mass-produced characters. Mischief nights gradually yielded to organized community celebrations. Trick-or-treating became an American childhood tradition, and Halloween grew into one of the country’s most recognizable holidays.
But look closely at Reed’s photographs and something remains familiar.
People were dressing up.
Friends were gathering.
Someone was undoubtedly preparing food.
And somebody, apparently, thought riding through a Halloween parade dressed as a clown in sunglasses was a perfectly good idea.
More than one hundred years later, Lewis Reed’s camera lets us join the party.
Then and Now: Lewis Reed’s 1915 Photograph of the Lake House Hotel in Saylorsburg
In 1915, Lewis Reed pointed his camera toward the Lake House Hotel in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, capturing a quiet roadside scene that would take on an entirely different meaning more than a century later.
Today, the historic building is associated with the Hotel of Horror and the legends that have grown around it. But Reed’s photograph preserves another chapter of its history, when the Lake House was a well-established Pocono destination welcoming travelers long before anyone came there looking for ghosts.
Saylorsburg Lake House Hotel, Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, 1915. Photographed by Lewis Reed. Long before the historic building became home to the Hotel of Horror, it welcomed travelers to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.
Lewis Reed and His Camera
Lewis Reed was photographing people and places throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, leaving behind an extraordinary visual record of a rapidly changing America. His photographs include family gatherings, farms, automobiles, roads, businesses, buildings, and scenes encountered during his travels.
The Lake House photograph is particularly interesting because it takes Reed beyond his familiar Montgomery County, Maryland surroundings and into Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.
Rather than concentrating on individual people, Reed positioned himself across the roadway and photographed nearly the entire hotel. The result is a remarkably clear record of the building as it appeared in 1915.
The tall Victorian structure dominates the scene. Dormer windows rise from the roof, a large chimney towers above the building, and mature trees frame the property. Near the road stands a circular sign identifying the Lake House Hotel. Several people can also be seen around the building, small figures preserved almost incidentally in Reed’s view.
More than a century later, details that probably seemed ordinary when Reed pressed the shutter have become part of the photograph’s historical value.
A Hotel From an Earlier Age of Travel
The property had already been serving travelers for generations before Lewis Reed arrived with his camera.
According to the history published by the present-day Hotel of Horror, an earlier inn known as the Saylorsburg Hotel was built by Charles Saylor in 1847 on a site associated with stagecoach travel dating even farther back. The property was substantially enlarged during the late nineteenth century, and a major expansion completed around 1895 produced much of the imposing hotel Lewis Reed photographed twenty years later.
By 1915, the Lake House was part of an established Pocono tradition of hotels, boarding houses, lakeside recreation, and summer retreats.
Historic postcards from the early twentieth century show the Lake House being promoted to visitors during the years immediately before Reed photographed it. Travelers came to the Poconos for cooler summer weather, scenery, recreation, and a temporary escape from increasingly crowded cities.
Reed captured the hotel at a particularly interesting moment in American transportation history.
The automobile was beginning to give ordinary travelers greater freedom to explore destinations away from railroad lines and fixed schedules. Roads were improving, automobile ownership was growing, and Americans were discovering an entirely new way to travel.
For Lewis Reed, 1915 was significant for another reason. It was the same year in which he became involved in the Rockville Garage in Maryland, the business that would eventually become Reed Brothers Dodge.
His Saylorsburg photograph therefore comes from the very period when the automobile was beginning to shape not only his own future but the way Americans traveled.
The Hotel Reinvents Itself
The Lake House survived while the world around it changed dramatically. Its traditional hotel years eventually came to an end. The property was purchased in 1990 and converted into an antique co-op, according to the building’s published history. Then came the transformation that would give the old hotel an entirely new identity.
In October 1992, a haunted attraction opened inside the historic structure. More than three decades later, the Hotel of Horror and Altered Nightmares continue to operate there during the Halloween season.
What makes the attraction unusual is that the old hotel is not simply a theme created for entertainment. The historic building itself remains part of the experience, with its original rooms, corridors, staircases, upper floors and lower-level spaces forming the setting.
The former Lake House Hotel in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, as it appeared in 2025. More than a century after Lewis Reed photographed the building in 1915, the historic structure still stands, preserving a visible link to the Pocono region’s early era of hotels, roadside travel, and tourism. Google image, 2025.
History, Folklore and a Haunted Reputation
As the building aged, stories and legends naturally accumulated around it. Some accounts associated with the property have included tales of unexplained deaths, wartime events and other disturbing episodes. Such stories have contributed greatly to the building’s modern reputation, but folklore should not be confused with documented history.
That distinction makes Lewis Reed’s photograph especially valuable. His camera gives us something legends cannot: a direct visual record.
There are no ghosts, theatrical effects or Halloween decorations in Reed’s 1915 photograph. Instead, we see the Lake House as travelers of his generation would have known it, a substantial roadside hotel serving visitors during the early years of automobile travel.
A Moment Preserved in 1915
Lewis Reed could not have known what the Lake House would become when he photographed it more than a century ago. He simply recorded a place that caught his attention.
That is one of the remarkable qualities of his surviving photographic collection. Many of the buildings, roads, farms and communities he photographed were not necessarily considered historic when he stood before them. They were part of everyday life.
Time changed that.
Buildings disappeared. Roads were widened. Landscapes were transformed. Businesses closed and communities expanded. Places once considered ordinary became pieces of history.
The Lake House Hotel followed a somewhat different course. Remarkably, the building survived.
Today, visitors travel to Saylorsburg for reasons Lewis Reed could never have imagined. Yet beneath the haunted-house reputation remains the same historic hotel that stood beside the road when he raised his camera in 1915.
His photograph allows us to see beyond the legends and return, if only for a moment, to an earlier era in the Pocono Mountains.
More than 110 years later, that single photograph has become a historical record of its own: one photographer, one roadside hotel and one moment in 1915 preserved long after the world around them changed.
October 1915: The Birth of a Rockville Automobile Legacy
Rockville Garage, 1916. The early automobile garage at the intersection of Rockville Pike and Veirs Mill Road, where Lewis Reed and his partners were building the business that would soon become Reed Brothers Dodge.
111 Years Ago This Month, Reed Brothers Dodge Began Its Remarkable Journey
In October 1915, automobiles were still something of a novelty on the roads of Montgomery County. Horses and wagons remained common, many rural roads were unpaved, and owning a motorcar was far from an everyday experience. Yet the automobile was beginning to change how Americans traveled, worked, and connected with the world beyond their own communities.
It was against this backdrop, 111 years ago this month, that the story of Reed Brothers Dodge began.
Only a few months earlier, in July 1915, Lewis Reed had entered the automobile business with Roy and Griffith Warfield in a newly established enterprise known as Rockville Garage. The business operated at the busy intersection of Rockville Pike and Veirs Mill Road, an important crossroads at the edge of Rockville.
The location already had a brief connection to the automobile trade. In 1914, Lee Ricketts and his sons had operated an Overland automobile agency there, one of the earliest automobile sales operations in the area. Lewis Reed was not involved with the Overland agency, but the activity at the site reflected just how quickly the automobile was beginning to find a place in everyday life.
A New Automobile Company Comes to Rockville
The decisive moment came in October 1915, when Rockville Garage secured a franchise to sell Dodge Brothers Motor Cars.
The timing was remarkable.
John and Horace Dodge had introduced their first automobile only the year before, in late 1914. The brothers were already highly respected within the automobile industry, having supplied engines, transmissions, and other components to some of Detroit’s leading manufacturers before placing the Dodge name on a car of their own.
Their new automobile quickly earned a reputation for sturdy construction and reliability.
Far from Detroit, in the small county seat of Rockville, Lewis Reed and his partners recognized an opportunity.
The arrival of the Dodge Brothers franchise gave Rockville Garage an automobile line that would ultimately define the business for nearly a century.
At the time, no one could have known what that decision would become.
There was no sprawling dealership, no large showroom filled with rows of new cars, and certainly no modern service department. Early automobile dealers were often mechanics, salesmen, gasoline merchants, tire repairmen, and problem-solvers all at once. Keeping the early motorist on the road could be as important as selling the automobile itself.
Rockville Garage grew out of that pioneering era.
Original Owners of Rockville Garage, 1915. Lewis Reed with Roy and Griffith Warfield, the original partners in the Rockville automobile business that would become Reed Brothers Dodge.
Building a Business in the Early Automobile Age
Lewis Reed was a skilled mechanic as well as a businessman, an important combination when automobiles still required frequent adjustments and repairs. During the early years, the garage represented several makes in addition to Dodge, a common practice among automobile dealers of the period.
But Dodge gradually became the name most closely associated with the business.
The garage also sold gasoline, tires, accessories, and even farm equipment. Automobile dealerships of the 1910s were rarely limited to the sale of passenger cars. They served a community that was only beginning to discover what motorized transportation could accomplish.
The automobile was changing Montgomery County one road and one family at a time.
Farmers could travel farther to market. Doctors could reach patients more quickly. Businesses could move goods over greater distances. Families could visit relatives and neighboring towns without relying entirely on railroads or horse-drawn transportation.
Rockville Garage became part of that transformation.
From Rockville Garage to Reed Brothers Dodge
In 1916, Lewis Reed purchased a one-third interest in the business. Three years later, in 1919, he bought out the Warfield brothers.
That August, Lewis’s brother Edgar Reed joined him as a partner.
The business then took the name by which generations of Montgomery County residents would come to know it:
Reed Brothers Dodge.
Although the Reed Brothers name arrived in 1919, the foundation had already been laid four years earlier. The Dodge franchise obtained in October 1915 established the relationship with the automobile manufacturer that would endure through extraordinary changes in both the company and the community surrounding it.
The dealership survived the Great Depression, automobile shortages during World War II, changing highways, suburban growth, dealership relocations, corporate changes within Chrysler, and dramatic changes in the automobile itself.
Through it all, the Reed family remained connected to the business.
Three generations would ultimately guide the dealership.
An October Decision That Lasted Nearly a Century
What began at a modest roadside garage in 1915 eventually became one of Maryland’s oldest Dodge dealerships under continuous family ownership.
Reed Brothers Dodge in its later years on Frederick Road. From the modest Rockville Garage of 1915 to a modern automobile dealership, the family business grew and changed with Rockville while remaining under continuous Reed family ownership until its closing in 2012.
Reed Brothers Dodge remained in business until May 1, 2012, nearly ninety-seven years after Rockville Garage first began selling Dodge Brothers automobiles.
By then, the world surrounding the dealership bore little resemblance to the one Lewis Reed had known in October 1915.
The dirt and gravel roads had become highways. Rockville had grown from a small county seat into a major suburban community. The simple open touring cars of the early automobile age had evolved into vehicles filled with technology that the first motorists could scarcely have imagined.
Yet the thread connecting those two eras remained remarkably intact.
It began with a small garage, an emerging automobile company from Detroit, and a young businessman willing to place his future in a machine that was changing America.
One hundred eleven years ago this month, in October 1915, Rockville Garage became a Dodge Brothers dealer.
That moment marked the beginning of a relationship that would span nearly a century and become the foundation of Reed Brothers Dodge.
What may have seemed at the time like a promising new business opportunity became something much larger: a family legacy, a Rockville institution, and an enduring chapter in Montgomery County’s automotive history.
Remembering My Mother on Her Birthday
Every year when September 24 arrives, my thoughts turn to my mother, Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner. This year, rather than simply remembering her birthday, I find myself thinking about something that has become increasingly meaningful to me: how much of the history I have spent years preserving grew out of the many conversations we shared and the memories she passed along to me.
Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner (1922–2019).
My mother was the daughter of Lewis Reed, founder of Reed Brothers Dodge, and she grew up surrounded by a family business that became part of Rockville history. Long before I understood how valuable her memories would become, she was my connection to an earlier generation of the Reed family. During countless afternoon visits, we would sit together and go through boxes and albums filled with old photographs. Many had no names, dates, or locations written on them. I would hold up a photograph and ask, “Who is this?” or “Where was this taken?”
More often than not, she knew.
A face that meant nothing to me would bring back a name. A house, automobile, storefront, or familiar stretch of road would trigger a story. Sometimes one photograph led to another memory, and before long I was hearing about people and places that otherwise might have disappeared from our family history.
At the time, I don’t think either of us realized just how important those afternoons would become.
Years later, as I began researching and writing the history of Reed Brothers Dodge and organizing my grandfather’s enormous photographic collection, I repeatedly returned to the information my mother had shared with me. Her memories helped put names to faces, places to photographs, and stories into context. They became part of the foundation for this blog, my books, and the historical exhibits that followed.
In many ways, she became one of my most important historical sources.
A special Christmas memory with my mother, Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner, in 2004.
But what I inherited from my mother went far beyond family history.
She taught me to approach life with determination and curiosity. One of her favorite sayings was, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” She also refused to accept the word “can’t”. If there was a problem, her instinct was to look for a way around it rather than a reason to give up.
That philosophy stayed with me throughout my life.
Perhaps that is also why she never allowed age to dictate what she could learn. At 90, she joined Facebook. She learned to Skype and text, used an iPhone and a Windows PC, and approached new technology with the same curiosity she brought to so many other things. Instead of saying something was too complicated or that she was too old to learn it, she simply learned it.
She was also my greatest supporter.
One memory I especially treasure is seeing her in the audience at Glenview Mansion in 2016 when I received the Arthur M. Wagman Award for Historic Preservation Communication from Peerless Rockville. I was being recognized for documenting and sharing Rockville history, but so much of that work had been made possible by the woman sitting in the audience.
When I saw the pride on her face, I knew the moment belonged to both of us.
My mother died on September 10, 2019, just two weeks before her 97th birthday. Yet in a very real sense, she remains present in the work I continue to do. Every time I identify another photograph, uncover another piece of family history, or share another story from the Reed Brothers Dodge archives, I am building upon something she helped preserve.
Historical preservation is often thought of in terms of photographs, documents, newspapers, and artifacts. But some of our most valuable history lives only in people’s memories. If we are fortunate enough to ask the questions while those people are still with us, their memories can become part of the permanent record.
I was fortunate.
I asked the questions.
And my mother told me the stories.
Today, on what would have been her 104th birthday, I remember my mom not only as Lewis Reed’s daughter or as part of the Reed Brothers Dodge story, but as my mother, my greatest supporter, and the person who helped me understand that preserving history often begins with simply sitting down, listening, and remembering.
Happy Heavenly Birthday, Mom.
The stories you shared with me are still being told.
Manipulated Photography: The Artful Illusions of Lewis Reed
Long before modern editing tools existed, Lewis Reed was already experimenting with ways to reshape a photograph. He layered exposures to place the same person in two places at once, coaxed ghostly figures to appear in broad daylight, sketched new landscapes directly onto his negatives, and teamed up with his daughter Mary Jane to bring soft color to black-and-white scenes.
His collection of manipulated photographs showcases his extraordinary creativity and versatility, employing methods such as hand-tinting, double exposure, applied handwork, and surreal ghost-like effects.
This special spotlight explores the imaginative world of Lewis Reed’s manipulated photography, a body of work that reveals his curiosity, sense of humor, and remarkable skill with the photographic tools of the early 1900s.
The Art of Double Exposure: Two Worlds on One Plate
Lewis Reed and the same two ladies with bundles of flowers appear in this photo twice: standing on a bridge over Seneca Creek at Black Rock Mill, and again on the left at the foot of the bridge. The photo was taken in 1905.
Among his most striking techniques was double exposure. With precision and careful planning, Reed could layer two images onto a single glass plate.
A favorite example is a photograph where the same person appears twice in the same scene–once on a bridge, and again at the foot of it. The slight vertical seam where the exposures meet is still visible today, a reminder of the handmade magic behind the picture.
Without the benefit of modern editing tools, Reed achieved what we would now call a “clone effect”–over a century before Photoshop.
Ghosts in the Frame: Early Special Effects
Surrealistic, ghost-like effect of Lewis Reed (right) standing next to a tree in the middle of train track.
Reed also created what he called “ghost photographs.” To produce them, he pre-exposed a faint figure onto a glass plate and then photographed a second subject over it. The result: an incompletely exposed ghostly image as well as a ‘sitter’ looking perfectly unaware.
Hand-Drawn Fantasies: Adding Scenery by Pencil
Lewis Reed himself drew on the glass negative, using a hard graphite pencil, to create the illusion of a couple gazing out on a mountain range, which was not part of the original photograph.
One of Lewis Reed’s most artistic manipulations involved hand-drawn backgrounds. He sometimes sketched new landscapes directly onto the negative–mountains, cliffs, or textured skies–before printing the final photograph. The finished piece blends photography and illustration in a way that feels surprisingly modern, reminiscent of today’s mixed-media art.
A Collaboration in Color: Hand-Tinting by Mary Jane Reed
Amanda Reed after hand-tinting by Mary Jane (Reed) Gartner. Pastel was apparently a good choice for coloration.
Color film did not exist in the early 1900s, but Reed’s daughter, Mary Jane Reed, added life to his images with delicate watercolor hand-tinting. She brushed pale blues into skies, warm tones into skin, and soft greens into landscapes, giving Reed’s photographs an entirely new dimension. This father-daughter collaboration bridges technical skill and artistic intuition, two generations creating together.
Lewis Reed’s masterful use of hand-tinting, double exposure, and detailed handwork reveals not only his artistic creativity but also his technical skill in an era long before digital editing tools. These techniques allowed him to transform ordinary photographs into captivating visual stories full of playfulness and surreal charm. His work stands as a testament to the time, patience, and imagination required to manipulate photos by hand. For those intrigued by Lewis Reed’s fascinating photo manipulations and the art of early 20th-century photographic editing, the full series is available for exploration on this blog under the “manipulated photography” category.
For more on manipulated photography, visit the series: https://reedbrothersdodgehistory.com/category/manipulated-photography/.
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Reed Brothers Dodge History (1915-2012) by Jeanne Gartner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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