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April 1941. "Sign outside of church in the Black Belt, Chicago." View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam, Farm Security Administration.
April 1941. Storefront church and adjacent lunch wagon in the Chicago Black Belt. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam.
Chicago street scene, April 1941. Papers littering the sidewalk are "policy slips." ["Policy" was a lottery gambling system once common in some black communities.] View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam.
January 1938. Agricultural workers on a sugar plantation near Ponce, Puerto Rico. 2.25 inch nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.
January 1938. "Train loaded with cane on a sugar plantation near Ponce, Puerto Rico." Nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.
Another bird's-eye view of Eleventh Avenue, a.k.a "Death Avenue," on New York's West Side as captured by the Bain News Service circa 1911. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
Equestrian signalman on the New York Central's Eleventh Avenue freight line circa 1911. In a 1930 article on the West Side tracks' demise, the New York Times wrote of the "eight men and twenty-four horses comprising the famous 'cowboy troop' [or 'West Side Cowboys'] whose function it has been for years to ride ahead of the puffing locomotives as they wheeled along Death Avenue." The dangerous street-level tracks were eventually replaced by a 1½-mile viaduct, the High Line, that after decades of abandonment is being turned into a long, thin elevated park. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
W.T. Grant department store fire at New York's Sixth Avenue and 18th Street in April 1916. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.
Mounted flagman and freight. Another circa 1911 view of the Eleventh Avenue rail line in New York near West 26th Street. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection. The light spot at the top is from deterioration of the emulsion.
A detailed circa 1910 Manhattan streetscape of rail cars at West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue, known as "Death Avenue" for the many pedestrians killed along the New York Central's freight line there. View full size. Removal of the street-level tracks commenced on December 31, 1929. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. Update: Click here for the largest version.
New York's First Avenue at East 29th Street during the annual Little Italy festa circa 1908. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
Fifth Avenue at 51st Street in New York circa 1913. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
Columbus, Georgia. April 1913. "Night Work! Group of boys, all working in Massey Hosiery Mills. Most of them had been working all day and had an hour for supper and were going back into the mill (6 p.m.) to work until 8 as they have done several nights this week and for some time past. I found four 10-year-olds and several of 11 and 12 working in the evening after supper and they said it was a regular thing. Ferrell Butler, 10 yrs old, 1114 21st St., been working off and on one year. Marvin Williams, 11 yrs. old been working one year part of the time at night. Lawrence Webb, 12 yrs. Old. Jack Wright, 15 yrs. working three yrs., couldn't write his own name." View full size. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.
Valets pressing coats with electric irons at the St. Regis Hotel in New York circa 1910. 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
"New York - New Jersey Tunnel." One of two pairs of Hudson & Manhattan Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River sometime around their opening in 1908, after more than 30 years of off-and-on construction. A century later, the system operates the PATH trains between New Jersey and New York. View full size. 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. (History of the tubes.)