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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]
June 1942. M-3 tank and crew at Fort Knox, Kentucky. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.
Eagle Fruit Store and Capital Hotel at 10th and P, Lincoln, Nebraska. 1942. 35mm Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon. View full size.
Homesteaders Jim Norris and wife, Pie Town, New Mexico. October 1940. View full size. This is one of hundreds of pictures taken in Pie Town by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee in 1940.
Sept. 1940. "Serving the barbecue dinner at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair. Pie Town is a community settled by about 200 migrant Texas and Oklahoma farmers who filed homestead claims." Kodachrome by Russell Lee. View full size.
September 1940. "At the fair, Pie Town, New Mexico." An old coupe with rumble seat. What kind of car is this? Kodachrome by Russell Lee. View full size.
Pie Town schoolchildren singing. October 1940. View full size. 35mm Kodachrome by Russell Lee. Second boy from the right is "Pops" McKee, interviewed by Paul Hendrickson in the Smithsonian article on Pie Town.
October 1940. "Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders, Pie Town, New Mexico." Faro and Doris got divorced a couple years after this picture was taken; she ended up homesteading in Alaska. There is a book about her life called Pie Town Woman. Kodachrome by Russell Lee. View full size.
Filling station and garage at Pie Town, New Mexico. Photograph by Russell Lee. September 1940. View full size. "Original owner sold pies, hence the name 'Pie Town.'" Wikipedia says that person was Clyde Norman, who started a dehydrated apple business there in the 1920s. Pie Town hosts a Pie Festival in the fall; photographer Lee took dozens of pictures of the 1940 rodeo and barbecue, which we'll be posting. Here we can see details of the the 1940 fair, and that gas was 21 cents a gallon. (Goodbye everyone, I'm moving to Pie Town - Dave)
February 1939. "Child of migratory packinghouse workers. Belle Glade, Florida." View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the FSA.
Entrance to the Waffle Shop at 522 10th Street NW, Washington D.C. Circa 1950 photograph by Theodor Horydczak. View full size.
The Waffle Shop, 522 10th Street NW, Washington D.C. Circa 1950 photograph by Theodor Horydczak. View full size. The diner still exists but is about to close. This, kids, was the epitome of fast food. (McDonald's? Beh.)
"Mission where Elsie Sigel met her slayer." Photograph circa 1915. The body of the 19-year-old missionary, granddaughter of Civil War hero Franz Sigel, was found in 1909 bound in a trunk in her lover Leon Ling's fourth-floor apartment at 782 Eighth Avenue in New York, next to the Chinese restaurant where he was a waiter. Ling disappeared, and the crime remains officially unsolved. View full size. Read more about this notorious murder here (continued here). 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.
"3 p.m. Some of the boys at a busy trolley junction in Jersey City. Three brothers, Salvatore, 9 yrs. (in front), Joseph, 11 yrs. (cripple), Lewis, 13 yrs. (between these two). 'We would be murdered if we shot craps.' Boy at left sold me pair of dice for 2 cents." November 1912. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.