Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
Vintage photos of:
Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
New York circa 1900. "Italian neighborhood, Mulberry Street." 5x7 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
August 1939. "Centralia, Lewis County, Washington state. Railroad yard, looking down from highway bridge. Disaster to the town: The one remaining lumber mill burned down a week before. Note smoke and wreckage." Medium format negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
San Francisco, 1935. "Auto show. Model and Oldsmobile at General Motors display." 8x10 inch nitrate negative, late of the Wyland Stanley and Marilyn Blaisdell collections. View full size.
August 1939. "Western Washington subsistence farm, whittled out of the stumps." Photo by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
San Francisco circa 1919. "Sandow motor truck." Latest entry on the Shorpy List of Lapsed Lorries. 5x7 glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.
August 1942. "Women in industry. A million-dollar baby, not in terms of money but in her value to Uncle Sam, 21-year-old Eunice Hancock, erstwhile five-and-ten-cent store employee, operates a compressed-air grinder in a Midwest aircraft plant. With no previous experience, Eunice (last seen here) quickly mastered the techniques of her war job and today is turning out motor parts with speed and skill." Photo by Ann Rosener, Office of War Information. View full size.
August 1938. "Privy on wheels for use of field workers at the King Farm near Morrisville, Pennsylvania." Why Mother always made you wash your hands, and your vegetables. Medium format negative by John Vachon. View full size.
June 1942. Meanwhile, back in Chicago, we return to the Kassalo family kitchen for a another helping of "American as the Smiths and Joneses." Photo by Ann Rosener for the Office of War Information. View full size.
June 8, 1950. "Fields department store, business at 37th Avenue and 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Exterior, by night." (Daytime view here.) 5x7 inch acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size.
June 1942. Chicago, Illinois. "Manpower. Americans all. His war job with Pressed Steel Can Car Company gives Michael Kassalo an extra good appetite. Operating a vertical turret lathe in a Midwest tank plant, Michael is one of many hundreds of first- and second-generation Americans whose sole purpose during working hours is to get as many tanks as possible off the lines and ready for shipment to the fighting fronts. Michael's grandparents, with whom he lives, cling to the Slavic language and to many 'Old Country' customs, but Michael and his brothers and sisters are as American as the Smiths and Joneses." Photo by Ann Rosener for the Office of War Information. View full size.
June 8, 1950. "Fields department store, business at 37th Avenue and 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Exterior, by day." (And by night.) 5x7 inch acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size.
1919. "Cadillac touring car at rail stop." H Line streetcars of the San Francisco Municipal Railway. 5x7 glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.
DeLand, Florida, circa 1904. "School of Technology and Hall of Science, John B. Stetson University." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative. View full size.
December 1941. White Motor Company, Cleveland. "The chassis of an Army halftrack scout car get a workout. When this test driver at a large Midwest plant has put the machine through its paces, he'll know if it meets the exacting specifications of the Army." 4x5 negative by Alfred Palmer. View full size.
July 1937. "Sharecropper's wife, mother of seven. Woman in doorway is mother of fourteen, ten living; fifty-six grandchildren. Near Chesnee, South Carolina." Photo by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.