Boy with a long coat
Click here to view it larger.
Presumably he has help getting dressed, but I have to wonder how much patience he has for all those buttons. Even his shoes are buttoned. But despite requiring both a prop chair and a posing stand, he obviously has the patience to get his picture taken. This photo is another little Carte de Visite. It’s undated and unidentified, but the photographer is Gustaf Berg of Cannon Falls, Minnesota. The green-gray tint to the cardboard backing is correct (not just my scanner being faulty).
Pics of Then 
I suspect he’s wearing a dress designed to look like a coat, complete with handy little pockets. I wonder if those buttons were actually functional or purely decorative. I hope the latter!
You’re probably right about it being more of a dress-like garment than the outerwear we think of as a coat. I just wasn’t sure what to call it. As for the buttons, I wondered how else he would get in and out of it if the buttons are simply decorative. Zippers weren’t a thing then. It doesn’t quite look like something that would just slip over his head like a sweater. Does it somehow fasten in the back? I don’t know.
The left column of buttons (our left) looks decorative and the right column looks functional, but I bet he could avoid using the buttons with a little help from Mom.
Oh, yes, I didn’t mean to suggest they were ALL functional. I agree that it’s probably a single column, and probably the one on our right, that would need to be buttoned. But that’s still a little for a little guy to have to endure.