This photograph is of the east side of Front Street between Broad and Arch streets in Bath. The building on the corner of Broad and Front streets housed the chandlery of Zina Hyde & Co., initially owned by Zina Hyde and John Bosworth Swanton.

The company allowed its tenant Charles H. Pierce, a photographer and the likely creator of this image, liberal access to mount advertising for his business. A large sign is mounted on the roof ridge of the two and one-half storied wooden structure and a more playful and out-of-scale camera emerges from the corner of the second floor to graphically illustrate the business's purpose and location.

The sign under the upper-story windows that notes "Ambrotypes" suggests that this photograph was taken during the process's most popular period of 1855 to 1870. But Charles Pierce does not appear in the 1860 census of Bath.

The first-floor windows of the chandlery on Front Street are large for the technology of the time period to provide a display of the goods for sale inside. The chandlery was still known as Z. Hyde & Co., although after Hyde's death in the 1850s the business was run by J. B. Swanton and J. C. Jameson.

The music store to the left or the north of the Pierce/Hyde building likely was run by the Magoun family. This particular print probably dates from the late nineteenth century.