When 24-year-old Edward Lange arrived on Manhattan Island from the SS Frankfurt in July 1870, he had no intention of moving to the Lower East Side like so many other German immigrants.

Instead, he turned his gaze further east, to another island – a land where there were no cars yet and which could only be reached by boat. The Brooklyn Bridge had not even been built yet.

Over the next 17 years, Lange documented over 150 landscape photographs of Long Island—from houses to harbors to cities—becoming one of the region’s most prolific artists, capturing a rare moment as Gilded Age industrialization slowly made its way to the island.

Preservation Long Island’s exhibition “Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870-1889” features about 75 of the artist’s works at the gallery on Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor starting Friday through Dec. 1.

It will document the artist’s journey from newly arrived immigrant to influential promoter of the region’s growing social culture and scenic beauty, organizers said.

“These are really detailed images that are really amazing and capture this area at a time of great change,” said Lauren Brincat, chief curator and collections manager for Preservation Long Island. “You see the increasing industrialization along the Long Island Rail Road, but you still see the remnants of the maritime economy that was the backbone of Long Island for centuries.”

At a time when photography was in its infancy and not widely accessible, Lange filled a gap in the documentation of Long Island, from the downtown areas of East Northport and Huntington to port towns like Port Jefferson and Port Washington to Montauk in the east.

The exhibition coincides with the release of Preserving Long Island’s publication of the same name, which includes over 100 color images of Lange’s work and essays on his life. Several walking tours will also be offered.

This is a rare opportunity to see so many of Lange’s works exhibited together, said Brincat, co-editor and author of an essay in the publication.

Some pieces had previously been exhibited at Long Island historical societies, while other works were photographed in the 1970s and appear in black and white.

Lange’s success was based not only on his talent but also on his business acumen, Brincat said.

Born in Darmstadt in 1846, Lange grew up in a family well established in the arts. His father, Gustav Georg Lange, owned a printing press and published several popular volumes on German history and picturesque landscapes.

Gustav also owned land in Commack, where Lange moved and which he later inherited.

When Lange arrived here, the United States was still recovering from the Civil War and many were patriotic and proud of the place they lived, Brincat said.

Both an entrepreneur and an artist, Lange took the opportunity to sell his work commercially as prints, often using his signature gouache, an opaque watercolor, and bold brushstrokes in contrasting colors.

Newspapers published his work as advertisements for Long Island, which was then a vacation destination for the wealthy.

“Columbia Grove at Lloyd Harbor,” for example, shows the former beach resort where vacationers arrived by boat.

Lange also made collages like postcards from his sketches by taking photos of them and creating still images from them – he was one of the few artists in the region doing this at the time, Brincat said. He then sold these collages as inexpensive souvenirs.

“He’s an immigrant who’s coming here and making a name for himself in the process, promoting this region and fitting in with the emerging industrial status and advances in transportation,” Brincat said.

In addition to landscapes in which technology is more subtle, Lange also depicted industrialization head-on. For example, he sketched several train stations shortly after their completion.

The former Brown Brothers Pottery, which operated from 1863 to 1905, was one of many buildings documented by Lange that played a major role in Huntington’s industrialization, said Emily Werner, curator and collections manager at the Huntington Historical Society.

Ceramics and pottery were incredibly important in the 19th century because they were one of the few ways to store and preserve objects at the time. A keen eye for detail in every face of a figure and in every inch of the work brings it much more alive than a photograph could, Werner said.

The Huntington Historical Society loaned six Lange pieces to the exhibition to help preserve the village’s history.

Brincat cautioned, however, that Long Islanders should view Lange’s work in context; the works are described as photorealistic because some objects – and some groups of people – are intentionally left out.

Certain depictions of industrialization, for example, show a quiet field with two horses and a buggy. One example is the Setauket Rubber Factory, which operated from the late 1870s to the early 1900s.

The factory employed nearly 700 people, many of whom were Eastern European Jews who had recently immigrated to the United States; none of them are pictured in the photograph.

“It’s a smoky, dirty, smelly, dangerous place where real people work,” Brincat said. “And you don’t really see it.”

Lange’s images of hotels and resorts also ignore the work and dedication of the people of color and immigrants who worked there and helped sustain the industry, says Brincat.

“There’s a lot more going on outside the scope of this work that he’s not including in some ways because he’s trying to sell something,” Brincat said. “The deeper question is who this art is for, who is being left out of the discussion.”

Lange moved with his family to Olympia, Washington in 1889 and died in 1912. His house burned down shortly after his death and all of its contents were destroyed.

Brincat said that’s why parts of Lange’s story are hard to grasp. She hopes that people who see Lange’s work will think more deeply about why Long Island is the way it is today.

“The events of that period in the late 19th century really impacted or fundamentally shaped Long Island as we know it and live on today,” she said.