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The Village Smithy: 1937
August 1937. "Blacksmith's shop turned into a garage. Cambridge, Vermont." Photo by ... calendar. I've searched and can't find out why 16 August, 1937, was a holiday. Anybody know? [August 16, Bennington Battle ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/25/2017 - 9:17pm -

August 1937. "Blacksmith's shop turned into a garage. Cambridge, Vermont." Photo by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. What's the holiday?Note the calendar. I've searched and can't find out why 16 August, 1937, was a holiday. Anybody know? [August 16, Bennington Battle Day, is a Vermont state holiday. -tterrace] Seeing DoubleSo much to see here! The stove looks to have been converted to used crankcase oil. And not counting the multiples of various stocked items... two fire extinguishers and two phones! (Not counting what looks like it may be a third phone in the back corner) And then there's the mystery of the subset ringer box below what looks to be a first generation Western Electric Model 50A payphone. I guess they wanted the payphone to be able to receive calls too. All this makes me want to flush out my radiator! And I forgot to point out the two drills earlier! That Third PhoneI'll bet it is a battery charger. I count three fire extinguishers including the "Fire Grenade" hanging from the ceiling to the left of the light socket. It looks to be a Shur-Stop — "The Automatic Fireman On The Wall" designed with a lead strip that would melt and allow the glass to break and release the chemical. These were all filled with carbon tetra-chloride. If the fire didn't kill you, the poisonous gas surely would. He modified the stoveIt looks like he installed a faucet on top of the stove to drip waste oil into the fire. There is a barrel with stains on the side like oil would make, and the pipe goes directly from the barrel to the faucet. There are rags or clothes draped on the pipe. I'd think that would really make some heat! It's not a phone.The item mounted high on the wall in the back corner (just to the right of the stove pipe) that looks similar to a telephone is a Battery Slow Charger. The part protruding out the front that resembles the microphone that you would talk into is the Amp gauge, & below that there is a knob you turn to adjust the charging rate. You could charge several batteries at the same time with this set up by attaching jumper wires in parallel between them. My Granddad had one of those from when he had a garage during that period. It's internal circuitry used a very large Tungar Bulb which when in use would glow like an old style radio tube & generated a ton of heat. The sides & top of the box have vent louvers cut into them to help keep it cool during operation. The Tungar Bulb looked like something that you would expect to see in Frankenstien's laboratory. So much to seeThe anvil appears to be the last item of the blacksmith's trade showing. The mechanics chair has been repaired several times, using whatever scraps of wood he could find. Also of interest is the tool chest by his left polished wingtip shoe. There looks like a cooling fan in the side. Tool chest "cooling fan"I'm going to guess a circular vent with a rotating part which allows more or less air in by varying the opening. A solitary bombAlso noted: Up in the rafters, a single carbon tetrachloride-filled "fire bomb" - a glass "grenade", usually with lightbulb form factor, held in place by a temperature-sensitive fusible link. When the fire melts the link, the bulb crashes to the ground, and the chemical vapors (supposedly) starve the fire of oxygen. The very, very small fire, that is. A whiff of a workshop Madeleine?I used to trail around behind my grandfather in his workshop - not nearly as well appointed, but of the same vintage. My west Texas cowboy grandpa was, among other things, a seller of used cars. He would supplement his monthly income by buying, fixing, and selling used automobiles. He had a small garage workshop where he would tune and make minor repairs to clunkers and flip them, pre-Craigslist style, by parking them on a busy street corner with a home-made sign in the window. By the mid-60's he was out of the car business, but kept his workshop functional. When I'd visit, Ted would usually have some small project waiting for me - sharpening a hatchet, drilling a hole in a broom handle, melting lead for fishing weights. He was not a chatty guy, just gave gentle instruction and guidance (righty-tighty, etc.) When I invariably let go of the wrench to make the final twists of a screw or nut with my fingers, he never failed to say "better use the wrench; you might twist the head off that screw with your bare hands." Seeing this workshop photo returns me to a recurring theme: our sense of smell and the way our brains organize memory. Our olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, and the two are very closely related; aromas can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously. I think it must work in reverse, too, because just looking at this photo evokes remembered aromas of: *oily rags *gasoline *sawdust and straw (Ted used to soak up the crankcase fluids with shavings he kept in an old 55-gallon drum) *warm vacuum tubes from the radio *rubber tires and belts *cigar smoke *percolated coffee *Vitalis hair oil *old paper magazines *whiskey (Granddad normally kept a pint bottle hidden among the oil cans) *ionized air from the power drill *West Texas dust and dirt dauber nests Anyone catch a whiff of other scents? Other scentsVery fine list of olfactory triggers, Gooberpea. Since you ask, I would add the steel of the anvil, battery acid, and (no disrespect intended) the man himself. Brands, brands, brandsACME Ventiduct, makers: The Wehrle Co. Newark Ohio Exide - When it's an Exide you START Car Battery Hydrometer Tester Gates Vulco V-belt Kyanize, Boston Varnish Company, "Coach Black" Car Varnish oTc (Owatonna Tool Co.) tools Shur-stop for FIRE: The Automatic Fireman on the Wall Failed to find the "Tire C(hain?) Chart" from the Columbus McKinnon Chain Corp., nor could I find the Telephone Directory. Searching for "Socon Super Pyro" I was afraid to get caught for terroristic reasons. (The Gallery, Arthur Rothstein, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Gas Stations)
Minivan: 1937
July 1937. "Sharecropper family near Hazlehurst, Georgia." Nitrate negative by ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/30/2012 - 2:44pm -

July 1937. "Sharecropper family near Hazlehurst, Georgia." Nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration. View full size. No cupholdersObviously not needed! Baby camouflageSurprised no one has spotted the feeding baby yet, its camouflage is working well. [Somebody did. See the first comment below. - Dave] Good mileage, but......what if the horse has gas? Public BreastfeedingConsidering what a hot-button issue public breastfeeding is these days, when modesty standards are presumed to be looser, I find it interesting to see this mother willingly and happily breastfeeding her child in a photograph. Granted, she is being what most would call "discreet," (and the baby's bonnet is rather amusingly functioning as camouflage), but interesting nonetheless. Maybe she's wearyWomen do get weary, wearing the same shabby dress. This is one of those photos that speak a thousand words or more. Dire poverty, aged before their time, babies like steps, deprivation in every material thing. Yet they manage to smile for the photo (perhaps some coinage was in it for them)? Where does one begin to speculate on their needs? The kids appear to be freckled redheads but maybe not. How old do you suppose the parents really are? The children here may still be with us, but in a picture like this, one cannot help but be full of curiosity as to the austere circumstances and hopefully better outcome soon. Very thought-provoking photo Shorpy and makes everyone realize they were not so hard-up as previously thought. Live HardCould that be Bruce Willis' grandfather? Because I sure see a resemblance. Also, nice camouflage idea, making baby's bonnet out of the same material as Mama's dress. What's with these Depression-era women, anyway? They're always flashing us. Matching Baby BonnetThe patterned bonnet that matches the dress makes the breast feeding infant almost imperceptible. Dad's teeth help with the visual distraction, too. Not Completely RagsI would guess this couple isn't much older than in their mid 30's. You age quickly in hard working conditions. I grew up on the farm with not many luxuries. These people aren't exactly in rags for clothes. Who knows, they may have their best clothes on for this photo shoot. I've worn much worse when laboring as a kid. That board as a seat sure doesn't look to comfortable though. People:This is real. Feed SacksThe dress and sun bonnet were probably made out of feed sack fabric. I suspect she had a bit of scrap material left and decided to make the baby a matching hat. Feed sack fashions were VERY common during these times. Every girl had a dress made of them, nearly every boy had a shirt with at least some part of it sewn from them and everyone had a quilt made of the scraps. And we think WE recycle? Longevity Petty good bet the parents are in their early thirties. I imagine they were sharecroppers. Unfortunately, they aged too quickly. I hope the kids did better. PoignantOld before their time for sure. You can't tell, but her teeth are probably as bad or worse than his. They are doing a good job with their kids, they look well fed, as does their ox, but theirs was a hard life. Look at his nails. Great photo. Tobacco RoadI finished reading the book recently. This is a stark reminder of life for the poor in our country in the 1920-30's. (The Gallery, Dorothea Lange, Great Depression)
Skid Row: 1937
March 1937. "Men on 'Skid Row.' Modesto, California." Medium-format nitrate negative ... drunks, junkies and mentally ill people. Ms. Lange's 1937 subjects look like university faculty members compared to the Bowery ... I always get double enjoyment ... from pictures from 1937 since I was born in August that year. I picture my mother as a pregnant ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/29/2009 - 9:59am -

March 1937. "Men on 'Skid Row.' Modesto, California." Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration. View full size. The BoweryThe NYC Skid Row was the Bowery, essentially the southern (downtown) end of Third Avenue. To this day it attracts guys and some women that are down on their luck. It is however, like many parts of the big cities, being gentrified. Expensive condo apartment houses were built, a few are being built and others planned. The ailing economy slowed it down but it still manages to survive. The Modesto inhabitants look much cleaner and better groomed than the Bowery flophouse denizens -- mainly drunks, junkies and mentally ill people. Ms. Lange's 1937 subjects look like university faculty members compared to the Bowery people of the 1940s and '50s that I remember. ContrastsI can't help but notice the men may be on Skid Row, but are still neatly dressed as possible. The couple in the car passing at right seems to be studiously ignoring them. Finally, I presume the sign across the street says Turner Hardware and -- but can't conclude what the last word might be. ["Hardware & Implement Co." - Dave] Turner Hardware and Implement Co.The building is still there, and has been renovated into a rather attractive office complex. Not skid row any more! And today ...Same building, I believe: View Larger Map I always get double enjoyment ...from pictures from 1937 since I was born in August that year. I picture my mother as a pregnant young woman living in those times. Turner Hardware todayhttp://reedproperties.net/index.php?album=the-turner-building-located-at... (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Dorothea Lange, Great Depression)
Kitchen Nightmare: 1937
June 1937. "Child of Earl Taylor in kitchen of their home near Black River Falls, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 06/01/2013 - 3:15pm -

June 1937. "Child of Earl Taylor in kitchen of their home near Black River Falls, Wisconsin." Photo by Russell Lee, Resettlement Administration. View full size. SpeculatingNobody knows what was really going on here but there are so many possibilities. After looking at Michael L's comment and photo, it seems the kids are all withdrawn, shy and very timid so they may be afraid of Dad. Or perhaps one parent had a mental or physical illness and the other parent was expected to do all the work alone, impossible for one individual with seven needy kids a year or two apart. There were no disposable diapers, baby wipes, cleaning wipes, convenience foods or Swiffers. Both parents are young, could have been a teen marriage and Dad appears to be indifferent and disinterested in any of them while Mom looks embarrassed and stands away. Clearly there is extreme poverty there but for whatever reason, keeping a neat, clean home and nine people contented was not possible. A family needs both a head (usually the father) and a heart (usually the mother) and together, both need to be strong enough to handle the needs of a family of nine. There were probably even more future babies to come but none of us know the real problems here. It may be a heartbreaking story but we can only hope it had a happy ending. Seeing this picture should make you stop feeling sorry for yourself and count your blessings, knowing things can always be a lot worse. In the South, we say"They're doing the best they can, bless their hearts." maybe, maybe notMaybe they are slackers, maybe not. Obviously, dyfunctionals and messies are not a new phenomenon. My personal take would be that the parents have other and larger problems besides being dirt-poor. Back then it could have been moonshine, today maybe it would be meth. The kid's bibs could need a wash, too. On second thought, please let me elaborate and add some other possible / probable problems: - Just being overwhelmed by adverse conditions. It might be the economy, after all. - Living way out in the boonies where nobody ever drops by, nobody cares, no social checks and ballances, no Joneses around to whom one might need to keep up with. - Or having lost all pride. - Any number of others. As I recallThere were several posts of the Taylor homestead. Most if not all of their children grew up and had families of their own. Probably without any government assistance. [Actually, many if not most of these people were Resettlement Administration clients. That's why their photos are in a government archive. - Dave] Nightmare is rightThere's poor and then there's poor. Needs a woman's touchI'm guessing that Mr. Earl Taylor may have been a widower. [Nope. - Dave] No excuse for this filth. I knew many very poor people when I was growing up in Europe, but that did not preclude their keeping a neat, clean house. Nightmare is Wrong.Just because you are poor doesn't mean you have to live like a filthy pig. The parents are slackers. So which one of them is Andy?You know, Opie's Dad. Hygiene did not come from the genesSome people forget that the concept of hygiene is not something that stems from spontaneous generation, it is taught until is ingrained into the culture. These parent’s parents –obviously as poor as them- grew up into the XIX century when the concept of hygiene just began to get hold and just in the most urban and educated areas. Education apart, isn't that obvious also that these folk didn't have all the modern appliances and cleaning products that today we take as granted and cheap? Or that caring for seven children –no pills back then- set the priorities in other orders? When all of the children are barefoot, how come people get disgusted or offended by untidiness or some dirt? Furthermore, think that unless you have royal blood (and to a certain degree), all your ancestors lived in worse conditions. Too busyThe Mrs probably had a busy week and got a little behind on the house cleaning. Slackers or notThis photo and the accompanying family scene certainly do reveal a nightmare of poverty during the Great Depression. The little boy doesn't look particularly dirty to me, especially considering the fact that he has no shoes. He apparently had just wet his pants (which certainly haven't had time to dry), but I know that a child as young as he might do that about 60 seconds after being changed. Consider the likelihood that there is no indoor plumbing or no running water. The kitchen doesn't look any more dirty than the kitchen we can see in Homeless Cooking, when you account for the fact that one uses diesel/gas and this one uses wood or coal which is a much dirtier heat source. And apparently this family has managed to hold out renting an actual building to live in at the time of this photo rather than live in a tent as pictured in the referenced second photo. Does that make the parents bigger or lesser slackers than those who live in tents? I know it's an American passtime to blame poor people for all their problems (and often for society's problems) but if you haven't walked in someone else's shoes and don't have any details of their circumstances other than their abject poverty during the Great Depression, please try to restrain yourself from condemning other folks. And I've seen pictures of filth from Europe before -- do I really have to provide links to prove that? Lastly a thought: Consider a wealthy family with inherited money of this period who don't work and who pay other people to do all their cooking, cleaning and child caring. Slackers, or not? What might have beenIf they could have cleaned up that oven. My mother always saidsoap and water are cheap, no excuse for filthy, that little infant standing in his own filth and pouring in more tugs at my heart. The mother must be overwhelmed to allow this condition, and to let it be photographed. RIP Dear Lady, assuming she has gone to her final reward. Not quite a thing of the pastI have witnessed similar scenes in rural Maine not too long ago. Poverty and neglect knows no age. Sometimes you just can't do it all.The place looks awful. But the little boy looks clean and well-fed, and he looks like he was loved and cared for. I have seen similar in the year 2013. Doing what they canA lot of judgment going on here on Shorpy, unfortunately. I agree the kitchen is awful - no argument there. But I did a little research on the family. Earl Taylor was a younger son of a farm family in the area (1910 census). By 1920, he was 22 and the only one left at home (1920 census). In 1930, his father had died, and his mother was the widowed head of household. Earl had also been married and widowed, and he lived on the farm with his mother and his three children, two sons and a daughter (Earl Jr., Albert, and Evalina). I believe they are the three oldest kids in the family photo Dave posted (1930 census). Earl apparently remarried in about 1921 to a woman named Edna (pictured), who was a widow with two sons (Howard and Garvey Simplot, the two on the far left, I'm guessing. He was 43 and she was 29 in 1940 (1940 census). Together, they had the two smallest boys in the photo, Ronald and Ersel, followed by another son, Garry, around 1938. The little boy in the kitchen photo would be Ersel, age 2 at that time. The census shows the father as a laborer for the WPA. Their home was valued at $200 and his earnings for 48 weeks of work in 1939 was $420. No conveniences... a large (blended) family, extreme poverty, and little hope -- pretty bleak picture. But I think they also probably had a lot of love going on. I hope they eventually did well. These poor people are my family.The little boy in the kitchen was my father. You have his name wrong, it was not Ersel, it was Cecil Taylor. Yes my fathers family was extremely poor and my grandmother was not the best house keeper in the world, but she was a very hard worker as was my grandfather. While they were strict with their children they were very good loving parents. Their circumstances did improve after the depression. When my grandfather Earl married my grandmother Edna he had four children, Earl Jr., Albert, Evelina & Duane. His first wife had died after giving birth to my Uncle Duane as she had a burst appendics that they thought was just after birthing pains, after this happened he sent the two smaller children to live with his wifes sister, this was before he had met my grandmother. My Grandma Edna's husband had been killed in a hunting accident and she had two boys, Howard & Larry Simplot. Together they had Ronald, Cecil, Gary, Jackie, Roger and twin boys Tommy & Terry (Terry died as a baby). They also cared for my Grandpa Earl's mother and took in other family members during these tough times. They had no indoor plumbing, no electricity & heated with wood at the time of this picture. Thank you for sharing the pictures, I don't think I had ever seen that particular picture of my dad. (The Gallery, Kids, Kitchens etc., Russell Lee)
Keypunch Orchestra: 1937
June 1937. "Baltimore, Maryland. For every Social Security account number issued an ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/23/2013 - 8:57pm -

June 1937. "Baltimore, Maryland. For every Social Security account number issued an 'employee master card' is made in the Social Security board records office. Testifying data, given on the application blank form SS-5, is transferred to this master card in the form of upended quadrangular holes, punched by key punch machines, which have a keyboard like a typewriter. Each key struck by an operator causes a hole to be punched in the card. The position of a hole determines the letter or number other machines will reproduce from the master card. From this master card is made an actuarial card, to be used later for statistical purposes. The master card also is used in other machines which sort them numerically, according to account numbers, alphabetically according to the name code, translate the holes into numbers and letters, and print the data on individual ledger sheets, indexes, registry of accounts and other uses. The photograph above shows records office workers punching master cards on key punch machines." Whew. Longest caption ever? Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size. Re: I dropped my first tray of cardsIn playing cards, it would have been called a "52 pick-up"; in Hollerith cards, it might have been a 5200 pick-up, or worse. They used to make a metal rod for carrying the cards, so they would stay neatly in order. It looked like a short spear, or a very large knitting needle. I am not at liberty to say how I know this, but I've heard through the grapevine that occasionally college students would use the rods for medieval sword fights. Again, that is just a rumor I heard; nothing I can personally confirm. The day I punched a key punch machineAs a damp-eared U.S. Army second lieutenant in the early 1960s, I was assigned to supervise some reservists during their two-week summer deployment to the Erie Ordnance Depot near Camp Perry, Ohio. We were a supply unit there to train on the Army's sizeable bank of IBM keypunch machines and all went reasonably well for a few days, with thousands of cards churned out to record the whereabouts and quantities of tons of military equipment. It was clear the Cold War would tilt in our direction because there was no way, I was sure, the Russkies had such technology on their side. About five days in, a soldier whose machine wasn't punching keys correctly called me over to help him. I knew zero about these things (hardly the first time the army put someone in charge of something he/she barely could recognize) but it was clear to me that if I pushed hard on these jammed keys here and maybe that bunch there, they'd pop in place and our nation would remain safe. The army had to fly an IBM wonk (he'd be an IT guy today, of course) in from New York to fix everything. The days I kicked a key punch machineOn the old IBM 029 card punch, my unjamming technique was to KICK the right side of the machine, HARD. Seldom required a second kick. The Candler BuildingAfter assisting in the field-measuring of every floor of the Candler building in the late 80's or early 90's, its octagonal columns and other memorable attributes are hard to forget! The building started out life as a Coca-Cola bottling facility. The individual column facets are not as uniform in shape as one might imagine. SortsYou do card sorts by running the cards into one of ten bins based on the last number. Then stack up all the cards from successive bins and run them through again into bins based on the second-last number. After running them through that way on all the digits, they're in order on all the digits. The chief hazard is card destruction by the machinery. In 1960 the keypunchers were all women but the boss was a woman too. Gradually the self-service keypunch area grew and the keypunch service shrank, as programmers learned to type faster than the turn-around on the provided service. Today programmers are all speed-typists. IT Guy From NYYep, that's me. I started in "computers" back in 1969, and they STILL had keypunch machines (albeit a newer, updated model from the one in this photo)at that time. Ladies known as "keypunch girls", later changed to "data entry clerks" were still the norm in '69. Not only was data created, but guys like me had to learn how to use the machine to create the cards that were read in to the computer to run the programs to process the data. Big grey tray cabinets (similar to the old card indexes in public libraries - anyone remember those?) held hundreds of trays with data. PC's were still a long way off. I worked for the Lincoln Savings Bank in Brooklyn until 1972, when I got married, and left for a better job with more money. I am still in the IT field, just turned 65, and work for Barnes & Noble, the booksellers. Haven't seen a keypunch machine in a long time, Everything now is server driven. Great Photo! Brings back a lot of good memories, especially for us "wonks". OH BTW - they call us "geeks" nowadays. For a good reasonThere is no backspace key on a keypunch. I dropped my first tray of cardsOn the tab room floor around 1968 The Sorter Ate My ProgramI was an operator/programmer during my tour in the Marine Corps. I used to HATE it when one of the pieces of equipment mangled some of my program cards, but the worst offender was the antique (even then) IBM 1401. Three units - CPU, Printer and card reader - each the size of a Volkswagen and giving a blistering 4 megbytes of memory. It was our fiscal computer and usually a lot of Marines leaving the service liked to "tinker" with the system, usually by inserting a card which instructed the machine to disregard any and all programs after a certain date (usually a month after said Marine had left the service). This photo brought back a LOT of memories. Early IBM SystemsThe IBM 701 was known as the Defense Calculator and it was announced to the public on April 29, 1952. It was also considered a Scientific Computer. The IBM 1401 was announced to the public on October 5, 1959. The IBM 1620 Model I was also introduced in 1959 and it was the first computer I learned about and used in 1962. ConfettiAs a young'un growing up in the 1970s, I spent MANY hours with stacks of punch cards my father brought home. We cut them up to make confetti. The rows of numbers made it easy to cut straight lines lengthwise, then cut a second set at a 90 degree angle. The holes made it fun, akin to driving over cobblestone as the scissors went from card to hole to card multiple times in a single cut. 1401 RestoredHere is a 1401 that has been restored to working condition; I was able to have helped out a tiny bit (no pun intended - well, okay maybe it was) with this project a few years ago. I have stood on that raised floor and listened to the glorious noise the machine makes when running a procedure that called for a lot of the machine resources at once - all the blowers and vacuum pumps and fans and motors; the smell of warm electronics and computer tape; the chatter of the printer; my my my! SO many memories!Yeah, my first IT job was about '69 as well. We were still hard-wiring unit record machines for reports and paycheck printing! rhardin has the sorter described perfectly. Of course, there were tricks to the job, when you had thousands of cards to sort. Among them was NOT placing the follower weight on top of a stack as you added them to the input hopper. That way, the machine ran continuously, until the output bins were filling up. Problem came when you got distracted and let the input hopper run down to (almost) empty. The bottom card would often buckle, tossing the last dozen or so above it into the air, and usually damaging the card. That's when JohnBraungart's title came in! DaveB 66 and still geeking IBM 1401s JohnBraungart: I started an IT career way back when as well, and remember the 1401 as well. I suspect you mean 4K of storage (we never called it RAM); the 1401 maxed out at 16K. It was a good machine in its way, and you certainly did learn a lot operating it. After that I was "promoted" to our 7080, and then to our two 360/40 systems. After that we went modern with the 370 series, and I fell in love with VM; ended my IT stint with the same company and retired after 35 years in IT. 701!The 701 was the predecessor to the 1401 (the first one I worked on). It was the last IBM tubed mainframe. They programmed one to control the traffic lights on Queens Boulevard in NYC. This was a first and they kept in service until the mid 90s! I did my thesis on a Univac 1600, a 20 K machine. The key punch machines never punched true. As StatPak took 18K and there needed to have room for the input data, the operators would swap out the operating system. We knew we had a bad card when the printer would start printing out paper with zeros by the box full. By the way, they still call the program that starts a mainframe the start up deck, even though punch cards have not been used in decades. Type 31 and expensive confettiSince nobody else mentioned it, those are Type 31 Alphabetical Duplicating keypunch machines. They were at the forefront of keypunch technology at the time, having a very typewriter-like keyboard with a separate number pad, a real numeric '1' key, and automatic card eject and feed. JS: You were making pretty expensive confetti! Circa 1975, used punch cards sold for around $110-$125 per ton. They were very high quality paper and the recyclers liked them a lot, and they also liked green bar paper. It took about 180 boxes of punched cards (2000 cards/box) to make a ton. We financed several Physics Department parties from recycled cards and green bar paper (which I think was around $75-$90/ton, but I'm not real sure of that one). FlashbacksOh my -- the infamous 1401... I still had to use one of these in the late '70s when attending Nassau CC at Mitchell Field (in the basement of a former barracks, no less) -- when computer sciences was still known as "Electronic Data Processing" -- oy. They jammed constantly and the only reprieve was getting past the first programming class where we were then "privileged" to have a pool of operators key in our programs for us (anyone ever punch out an entire program in Assembler on one of these?!?!) -- woe betide the hapless victim who mis-coded their punch sheets and got their deck back with all the "O"s as zeroes & vice versa. Rumor at the time (when some utility bills were still on these Hollerith cards) was that if you soaked them in a mixture of diluted bleach & alum they would shrink the holes just enough to pass thru a sorter unread. Me tooI'm another USMC vet who started off with the old keypunch machine in 1967. Someone once pointed out to me that the unique thing about punch cards was that they are the only medium that can be read by both a machine and the human eye. [Were, anyway, in the days before OCR. - tterrace] Punch cards: binary for the massesYes, those IBM cards where coded in binary, but the translation was printed on the top. One side benefit of punch cards was the chad (what was punched out to make the holes) was as a random number generator of sorts. Put a bit of moisture on your finger tip, stick it in the chad bucket and out would come a nice selection of random numbers stuck to your finger. Useful for the lottery, office pools, etc. With early IBM computers (like the 1401, et al) where there was no macro to control input/output you could issue the "start read/feed" to the card reader and see how may instructions you could run before you had to issue a "read" - i.e. before the card actually hit the read head. Thank Herman HollerithThose "IBM cards" are properly "Hollerith cards", after the inventor of the punched card system. He came up with it for the 1890 census. An operator would lower a thing with lots of pins which looked like a meat tenderizer onto the card, which had been punched with holes detailing the characteristics of a person (age, race, etc). Where a pin went through a hole and hit a contact, an electric current would advance a clock dial by one. As a result, the 1890 census was tabulated in only a year, compared to eight years for the 1880 census. The size of the card was no accident - it is the size of the dollar bill at the time. Hollerith picked it because then the cards could be sorted into racks designed for banks to sort cash. (Technology, The Gallery, Baltimore, Harris + Ewing, The Office)
Wrappin' With Mamie: 1937
1937. "Little did Mrs. Mark Bristol realize when she baked, Virginia style, a ... Book Encyclopedia. Washington Post, Nov 25, 1937 A few years ago Mrs. Mark Bristol, wife of the rear ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/12/2011 - 7:25pm -

1937. "Little did Mrs. Mark Bristol realize when she baked, Virginia style, a couple of hams for friends a few years ago that it would eventually develop into a lucrative business for her. The flavor of the hams so intrigued the friends that they passed the word on to others, and as a result Mrs. Bristol now bakes thousands of hams every year in her kitchen on fashionable Massachusetts Avenue and ships them to all parts of the world. Even the Duke of Windsor is now one of her best customers. It takes Mrs. Bristol four days to prepare a ham according to her specially formulated recipe. It is first soaked and simmered for days, and then while baking, it is sprinkled with cloves, pineapple and basted with sherry, brandy or applejack. The hams are originally obtained from a special farm in Virginia where they have been smoked in the real Dixie manner. Mrs. Bristol frequently inspects the ham while is it in the simmering process. Her Virginia cook and first assistant, Mamie, wraps the meat." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size. Somehow...I don't think that's Saran wrap. Had no idea a clear-film wrap was made that early. Anybody tell me what it is? [Probably cellophane. - Dave] More interesting than theMore interesting than the wrapping material are Mrs. Bristol's well-manicured fingernails. You don't often see closeups of manicures from that time period, which leave the tips and the half-moon shape at the bottom of the nail white while lacquering the rest. An interesting way to do things, for sure. Cellophane, incidentally, accounted for 25% of DuPont's profits in 1938. It came from outer spaceThat ham looks like a meteoroid! Mrs. Bristol's SouvenirsThe decorations in the room suggest that Mrs. Bristol, or someone in her family, was quite well traveled. The big appliqued cotton hanging on the back wall is a late 19th-century Egyptian festival tent section. These were made in Cairo in the Islamic Mamluk Revival style, and were very popular in the 1890s with tourists visiting the pyramids. The panels were very colorful. Here is another that is very similar to Mrs. B's, being used as a picnic windbreak in an oil painting by British artist Henry Brokman-Knudsen. HmmmI wonder how much of the cooking Mrs. Bristol did vs. how much Mamie did? [There might be a clue in the caption, where it calls Mamie "Mrs. Bristol's cook." - Dave] Who knew?Thanks for the heads-up on the cellophane. Looked it up on Wiki, very interesting. Now if I could just find out what the clear stuff used as a back window on the early automobile soft tops was, I'd be laughing. [Isinglass or celluloid. - Dave] Ham ParaphraseThe following text accompanied another photo from this series which was published in the Washington Post. The amusing aspect to me is that while the information is identical to the Library of Congress caption posted by Dave, each sentence has been slightly reworded. It reminds me of reports I "wrote" in 6th grade consisting of similar paraphrasing of passages from the World Book Encyclopedia. Washington Post, Nov 25, 1937 A few years ago Mrs. Mark Bristol, wife of the rear admiral, cooked a couple of hams for friends. The result was a lucrative business that involves the cooking in her kitchen on fashionable Massachusetts avenue of thousands of hams yearly. The hams are shipped to every corner of the earth. The Duke of Windsor is one of her best customers. Four days are required to prepare the ham according to the Bristol formula. It is soaked and simmered, baked and sprinkled with cloves, pineapple and basted with sherry, brandy or applejack. Mrs Bristol (above) frequently inspects the ham while it simmers. Mamie, her first assistant ham cooker, holds the lid. Manicured hamI think that is a "French manicure." I'd sure like to have that recipe for her ham. Henry Brokman-KnudsenI know there is very little chance that "Anonymous Tipster" will see this, but I'm delighted to see that painting by Henry Brokman-Knudsen of the garden party with the Khayamiya windbreak, or Egyptian Tentmaker Applique. Would anyone - especially Anonymous Tipster - be able to tell me more about where that painting is kept, or how they found that image? I'm also keen to see anything else that depicts those striking applique panels from Egypt, if anyone has seen anything else like the ones in the images above! (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Kitchens etc.)
Mildred Pepper: 1937
July 1937. Washington, D.C. "Mrs. Claude Pepper, wife of the Senator from Florida." ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/27/2012 - 7:09pm -

July 1937. Washington, D.C. "Mrs. Claude Pepper, wife of the Senator from Florida." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size. OffThat double-boiler isn't going to heat up anytime soon with all the burners off. QueryOne presumes she is fixing dinner for all the little Peppers. It would be interesting to contrast this shot with a contemporary Senators wife in the kitchen. I wonder how many of them do their own cooking? Long TimeMrs. Pepper would be a Congressman's wife for the next 52 years. [More like 42 years. She died in 1979. - Dave] HoweverYou could say this photo proves that, in the late thirties, Washington was just a quiet small town and not yet affected by the World and what was going on there. So you have the wife fixing dinner, a pretty typical and normal thing. Except for that burner-off question! I remember...kitchens like this. Very similar to the ones in the flats we lived in in San Francisco in the era. That could almost be my mother at the stove. Although we had gas stoves in San Francisco. Kitchens of the era were very stark and utilitarian. Not a lot of counter space. Food prep was done on the kitchen table. Unique stoveI've seen lots of electric stoves from that era but never anything remotely resembling this one. Interesting design, with countertop extensions and flush burners... and it appears that Mrs. Pepper is using the flush burners to get finer control of heat than is usually possible with an electric range. You couldn't slide a pan halfway off the burner on a more typical stove; the pan would just tip over. The WomanSo this is the woman for whom that shameless extrovert Senator Pepper gave up the habitual practice of celibacy and with whose SISTER he practiced nepotism. DetailsCrisco, Morton Salt, Quaker Oats. Liquor in the cupboard - are those limes? Why so many? And what is the purpose of that valve jutting from the wall above the sink? Soft-boiledMost likely it is breakfast if the egg cup on the counter is any indication. She is making a poached egg or a soft-boiled egg and in days of yore, the soft-boiled egg was placed whole in the cup, the top slashed off with a good swift swat of the butter knife and the egg was seasoned and eaten with toast. The saucer on the stove is what the egg cup sat on so you had a place for your toast and the top of the egg you would scoop out of the shell. The coffee percolator and the rather plain housedress hint that it is morning, no jewelry, makeup, etc. The reason the stove is off is because the egg has finished cooking and she is getting it out of the water with the slotted spoon. I know this because when I was young, my mom often made soft-boiled eggs. They're delish but difficult to cook "just right." I got itFlorida. Limes. Crisco. Key Lime Pie! BoilingThat's just the top part of a double boiler, being used like a regular saucepan. That's probably a water shutoff valve over the sink. What, no flames?If you look closely at the stove top, you can see how the electric elements are set into ceramic guides, with a power connection on each side. Electric was looked at as modern and clean and preferable to gas. Gas didn't have the cachet attached to it that it does today. Dig that extensive spice collection!Salt. And pepper! Wow! She had all the bases covered. Nice HandsOkay I admit it, my comment is trite. The Senator's wife has nice manicured nails. The maidis probably just out of the frame waiting for all this PR nonsense to be over so she can get back to work. Busy WomenThis reminds me of the Kodachrome my uncle took of my Grandma 15 years later. The kitchen has the same sparse look with shiny walls. Potent PotablesI'm really curious about those liquor bottles in the cabinet. Dave, any chance of a blow-up of that part of the image? Edit: Thanks, Dave. On the right is a bottle of sherry. Can't make out the one on the left. Funny how, seventy years ago, the Senator from Florida had no problem drinking fine Spanish wine, while today our President gets pilloried for eating French mustard. (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Kitchens etc.)
All the Allens: 1937
...   Black River Falls (vicinity), Wisconsin. April-June 1937. Photographs show families who live on small farms in cut-over areas. ... Bohemian farm families. Few scenes in town. June 1937. "Ray Allen family near Black River Falls, Wisconsin." Medium format ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/29/2014 - 12:41pm -

        Black River Falls (vicinity), Wisconsin. April-June 1937. Photographs show families who live on small farms in cut-over areas. Dilapidated log cabins and shacks; interior details. Poor families; Bohemian farm families. Few scenes in town. June 1937. "Ray Allen family near Black River Falls, Wisconsin." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Resettlement Administration. View full size. Bug ScreensDuring the depression bug screens were such a precious commodity that people used to tether their dog to the front door to make sure nobody would steal it while they were away and that wild animals couldn't tear it. They didn't have HVAC in those days and the houses were often improperly shaded so the kitchen could make the heat unbearable in the summer and open windows and doors would bring in bugs. This house has screen doors without any tears and this couple has obviously kept their children bathed and kempt under very difficult circumstances. Seven kids!Oldest daughter looks about 13, Mom & Dad look like they might be 30. Mom looks mighty proud of her brood! Good-lookin' mobI say, if all those children are that lady's, then I would say she has weathered the years well. They all look healthy and I hope life improved for them. I also hope there was a lot of love in that family. (The Gallery, Kids, Russell Lee)
Pitchfork Manor: 1937
June 1937. "Art Simplot and family in front of their house near Black River Falls, ... Looks like Marcella died in 1938 , not 1937 as listed in the genealogy link. she was not even 3 years old. After ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/13/2012 - 3:17pm -

June 1937. "Art Simplot and family in front of their house near Black River Falls, Wisconsin." The prolific Russell Lee shoots the prolific Simplots. View full size. SimplotWhen driving across the rural West, especially Idaho, one often sees signs advertising the Simplot company, a major supplier of farm products. I had no idea that "Simplot" was an actual family name. I had always assumed it was a corporate made-up name, like "Exxon" or "Wal-Mart." Absolutely amazingIn seven hours we went from an obscure 1930s photograph to seeing the obit and photo of one of the kids, not to mention the whole family tree. That would have been "weeks and weeks" of research by a team of people 20 years ago.(Sorry, sometimes I'm just overwhelmed by this interweb.) Marcella and Gaylord Looks like Marcella died in 1938, not 1937 as listed in the genealogy link. she was not even 3 years old. After second daughter LaFreda was born, the had another son, Gaylord, who only lived a week. Please, SantaCan my family get shoes for Christmas? They don't have to be new, but it would be good if they fit. Poor But ProudPoor in material things, but proud, self reliant, accomplished, healthy, happy, family-centered. Still therevia Find-A-Grave OK, I have to ask!Were they trying for a girl? Genealogyhttp://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/s/i/m/Desire-J-Simplot/BOOK-0... I wonderAre the 'forks being used to keep the roof together or is the roof being used to keep the forks together. Baby Girl MarcellaAccording to the genealogy link (thanks Wally!) the baby girl being held by the mother died a few months after that photo was taken. Very sad. It wasn't until three years later the family had another child, a daughter, La Freda. 2nd Oldest Boy 2012 ObitIrvin C. Simplot, February 5, 2012. Wall coverThe left part of the house looks like a classic log cabin. But is that leather nailed on the outside wall of the center part of the house? And would that be for curing or as a plaster substitute? Or as a pre plaster board way of keeping the wind from blowing through the gaps? [That's tarpaper. - Dave] How YOUNG was she?She was 27 and had SIX kids. I had NONE at this age. OTOH, my paternal grandmother had seventeen by the time she was 29! Do you feel a draft in here?StefanJ, the tarpaper was to keep the wind from blowing through the gaps in the boards. I'll bet that the inside walls are covered with old newspapers, as well. (My 1920 farmhouse has newspappers shellacked on to the boards behind the newer drywall; makes for some fascinating reading!) (The Gallery, Kids, Russell Lee)
Made in America: 1937
June 9, 1937. "Congress sees model of new proposed American-designed dirigible. Rep. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/26/2012 - 11:43am -

June 9, 1937. "Congress sees model of new proposed American-designed dirigible. Rep. Edward A. Kenney (right) of New Jersey, Chairman of the House Interstate Commerce Committee, viewing a model of a new American designed dirigible displayed at the Capitol today. Roland B. Respess, President of the Respess Aeronautical Engineering Corp., is pointing out the features of the ship to the House member. The House Interstate Subcommittee is hearing the witness on a bill recently introduced to authorize the loan of $12 million for constructing two eight-million-cubic-foot dirigible airships, a large American airship plane, and Atlantic operating terminal with a view toward establishing twice-a-week Trans-Atlantic airship service." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size. Full of ItWere they going to use all the "hot air" from Congress to fill it up? DirigiblesI can't say they were a total flop. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company seems to be happy with theirs. Opportunity KnocksThis was a month after the Hindenburg blew up. Not a blimpDirigibles are different than blimps. Goodyear and most of those balloons you see flying over stadiums are blimps, not dirigibles. [Not so. Dirigibles (steerable airships) include blimps. - Dave] Not Quite, DaveOriginally, "dirigible" DID mean "steerable," irrespective of the nature of the airframe. But, over time, its usage changed to mean an airship with a rigid internal skeleton (as in a Zeppelin), as opposed to an airship with no internal framework (Blimp). Both types of craft were indeed steerable, but the usage lost that distinction. [It may be common usage, but "dirigible" does not mean "rigid airship." It's a mistaken notion resulting from confusion over the similarity of the words "rigid" and "dirigible." Which still means "steerable." The only term properly used to refer to rigid airships is "rigid airship." - Dave] Several hundred man-hours of work,...and they stand it on the back of a few chairs? Hmmm, built with tax dollars, no doubt. The real questionis whether Rep. Edward A. Kenney of New Jersey, Chairman of the House Interstate Commerce Committee, really wanted history to remember him for wearing white shoes. He's A-Ok...Mr. Kenny's choice of footwear is protected because he is wearing them between Decoration Day and Labor Day. The unofficial White Shoe Season. Have a seat.I can see why Rep. Kenney was made chairman of the committee. Innovative DesignThe patent application for Respess's airship indicates that he was proposing a design to prevent the type of structural failure that had caused the crashes of several earlier US airships (USS Akron, Macon, Shenandoah). He had a number of interesting ideas about control systems and other features that would have brought airships up to late-1930s standards. But the Hindenburg was the nail in the coffin of any possible development of this thinking. His trip to DC with this model was probably a last-ditch effort. AmazingAmazing that this was still pursued regardless of the Hindenburg. All but one of the Navy's post-WWI airships were lost in foul weather, including the USS Shenandoah. I've got a small piece of its fabric in my desk right now. USS Akron, Shenandoah, and Macon all went down, and only the USS Los Angeles survived to see dismantlement in '39. Excellent DetailBeneath it are detailed scale models of the chairs that will be used to support it once it takes flight. Sometimes a dirigibleis just a dirigible. The value of ShorpyFor getting us (including myself) right on the definition of dirigible. My day isn't complete without my Shorpy. Thanks Dave. New form of suspensionThey've discovered a new way to keep dirigibles in the air -- bentwood chairs! No SmokingDo you suppose the No Smoking sign in the back is a safety measure intended to protect the honorable members of the committee in the event of hydrogen leaks? EtymologyEtymology is not destiny; that "dirigible" means "steerable" (or "directable" maybe?) rather than "rigid" does not change the fact that a blimp is NOT properly called "a dirigible" in modern English. ["Dirigible" is hardly modern English -- it's as antiquated as "aeroplane" or "omnibus." Back in the age of airships when it was in currency, the word was, for the most part, properly used. It's the airship fanbois of the modern era who got things mixed up. - Dave] Yeah, baby . . ."Fanbois" THAT'S what I'm talkin' about. Foy Las Vegas (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Zeppelins & Blimps)
Old Spanish Inn: 1937
Circa 1937. "Spanish Inn, 43 George Street, St. Augustine, Florida. Dr. Chatelain's ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/30/2012 - 11:00am -

Circa 1937. "Spanish Inn, 43 George Street, St. Augustine, Florida. Dr. Chatelain's photographs. P.A. Wolfe, photographer." Also known as the De Mesa-Sanchez House. Safety negative, collection of Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size. Been thereTraveling in remote regions of the Southwest, I rented rooms not much better than this. Now it reminds me of my post-divorce days. Jail might seem more agreeable. Waiting RoomThis is a room just waiting to be restored! Love it!!! AmenitiesThe free breakfast included with this suite was one of the first to feature the now microscopic blueberry muffins. But back in the day, when this was shot, you needed two hands to lift them to your face. Hotelsdot com complaints department please. Yes, I will hold. Creepy, in a literal wayThis room makes me itch. It may look like a mess nowBut we're sending Norman over with a broom, Miss Samuels. Here's the bath if you'd care to freshen up ... Hello, Maid Service?We have a little problem up here in #13. Knock knock. HousekeepING!Yes, please. Do come in. Towels? Si, si. Life certainly was simpler then.You didn't have to worry about electric irons, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, elaborate ceiling fixtures, or vacuum the floors. I've been cozened so much by modern conveniences that I'd probably get heat rash staying in the Spanish Inn for more than one night. The photograph is gorgeous, though. What an eye! What an artist! What a woman! How wonderful it would be to have a large-scale retrospective of her work at the National Gallery. Improvements"Old Spanish Inn, 43 St. George Street. One of St. Augustine's oldest surviving buildings, it has been restored to resemble an early 18th-century inn in Spain. Nine rooms are furnished with authentic Spanish pieces brought from Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Granada, and Barcelona." In the latest MobilguideThis place was rated one Dangling Bulb. A bit sparse, butIf they have reliable wi-fi I'll take it. I can sleep in the rocker. Mod ConRemove the bulb, and 100 years fall away. If this is a placeYou pay to stay, I can't like it! Looks to beA smoking room. ShorpyvisionWhat a cool, retro-look mount for a Flat-Screen!! That would be a great way to study all the photos here on Shorpy. All the amenitiesOnly the top rated hotel rooms come with an ironing board although they usually also include a bed. Nice antique washstand though. MemoriesWhen my wife and I quit work in the early 1980s and returned to grad school in Pittsburgh we moved into a place a lot like this. She was not a happy camper. We traded home improvement labor for rent and greatly improved the row house which at one time had been a house of ill repute. The things the youthful will do. (The Gallery, F.B. Johnston, Florida)
Cranked: 1937
April 1937. "Bureau in the bedroom of the house occupied by the Ingrahams and the ... audio In strictly temporal terms, playing a cylinder in 1937 would be like today sticking one of those round, silvery things - what are ... be interesting to look at 75 years later but I doubt in 1937 it was that impressive. [It is one of the many thousands of pictures ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/11/2012 - 4:45pm -

April 1937. "Bureau in the bedroom of the house occupied by the Ingrahams and the Smallwoods near Nelma, Wisconsin." A cryptic tableau if there ever was one. Medium-format nitrate negative by Russell Lee. View full size. Way "Up North"As a native Wisconsinite, I can honestly say that I have never heard of Nelma, WI, which appears to be a speck on the map. Nelma is about as far "up north" (a term used by natives to refer to the northern lakes and forest areas of the state where many have summer homes/cabins and where the deer hunting culture is king) as a Wisconsin town can be. And, it should be pointed out, that the Ingrahams's and Smallwood's home is only "near" Nelma, which makes it even further removed from civilization. The paper on the bedroom walls gives new meaning to the term "wall paper". (Let's hope that there is some insulation under it somewhere as the subzero temperatures in this neck of the woods can be extreme.) The artwork on the wall appears to be Dutch, but is not Vermeer. The bottles under the dresser could have contained liquor or liniment, both of which would have been necessary to survive life in Nelma. I don't want to think about the possibilities of why the hammer was lying side-by-side with a pair of boy's shoes. In addition, one can only hope that the two families were able to survive the seven years' bad luck that may have come as a result of the breaking of the mirror. As Dave stated, this indeed is a cryptic tableau. Old-school audioIn strictly temporal terms, playing a cylinder in 1937 would be like today sticking one of those round, silvery things - what are they called again? Oh yeah, CDs - into a machine rather than downloading or streaming an mp3 to your mobile device. Unless I'm MistakenThis tableau is one of the sets for Edison's lost 1909 version of The Shining. Functionality of wallpaperIn response to LilyPondLane's submittal: In our modern times, wallpaper is merely a form of wall decoration. Formerly, wallpaper had a utilitarian function to seal the interior space of the house, and prevent drafts. Many houses did not use sheetrock or plaster on the walls, and cold air could seep in past the wood siding and planking. Copyright InfringementI'd say this is a crime scene photo -- of a cylinder bootlegging operation! Why?My question is, why is there even a photo of this scene? It may be interesting to look at 75 years later but I doubt in 1937 it was that impressive. [It is one of the many thousands of pictures taken by Russell Lee and his colleagues documenting housing conditions for the Farm Security and Resettlement Administrations. - Dave] This is so wrong to sayJudging by those empties and what else is scattered on that floor, I'd say someone got hammered last night. Well, I did say it was so wrong to say. WallpaperAs an illustration for the utility of wallpaper as described by MaxCohoon, I have attached two photographs from the same series that show the house from the outside. It is constructed of logs. The caption for the detail photograph reads in part: "Note the earth fill around base to keep in warmth in the winter. The space between the logs is usually filled with cement or mud. The windows are removed when a house is abandoned; people cannot build glass." Old AudioEdison actually made cylinders until 1929. From a Victrola collectorThe mechanism looks like an Edison Amberola 30, but that cabinet is spartan. I'm not sure what the model number is without the ornate oak cabinet. Edison Amberola 30Agree with Michael that the machine is an Edison Amberola 30. The "-ola" suffix referred to an internal horn machine [Victor = Victrola, Columbia = Grafonola, etc.], and the cylinders made for use on the Edison machines were known as "Blue Amberols". Regarding sstucky's comment, Edison did make cylinders until the fall of 1929, by which point they were recorded using the electrical, rather than acoustical, recording process. Although cylinders had long since fallen out of favor with the record-buying public at large, Edison continued to produce them on the basis of many rural folks still having the older machines--this photo is a good indication of that marketing strategy. Ola!Victor claimed they chose the suffix -ola for their new internal horn machine because it had "a sound suggestive of music". Suggestive of music, perhaps, in that it was quite suggestive of another company's product: Aeolian's brand of player piano, the Pianola. Swiping other people's suffixes isn't without its poetic justice, and soon other phonograph companies began coming out with their own "olas" (actually the "o" was part of the word "piano"). Eventually an auto parts company, which had never manufactured pianos or phonographs, would appropriate it as a name for their new car radio, a name that's still around today. (Technology, The Gallery, Russell Lee)
Free Parking: 1937
September 1937. "Drugstore in Washington, D.C." Marked down from 35¢: Vince, now just 29 ... headline was the show's theme song. It was on the air from 1937 through 1955. Young Mickey On display is an Ingersoll Mickey Mouse ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 04/19/2013 - 9:59am -

September 1937. "Drugstore in Washington, D.C." Marked down from 35¢: Vince, now just 29 cents. Medium-format negative by John Vachon. View full size. Overstock?Seems like the good druggist may have bought more feminine products than he had room for in the stock room. I see Sal Hepatica is on sale. That company along with Ipana Toothpaste sponsored Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight in the late '30s. "Ipana Toothpaste for the smile of beauty and Sal Hepatica for the smile of health!" Those Modess BoxesEastman Kodak also provided oversize film boxes for use in drug store display windows. I suspect that the Modess advertising department had the same idea. Modess-becauseDoes anyone remember the ads for this product in 1950s and 1960s women's magazines, like McCall's and Ladies Home Journal? They featured a photo of a glamorous fashion model dressed in a designer gown, standing on the balcony of a Mediterranean palazzo, gazing at the stars. Below the photo was the line, "Modess-because." At the age of 6 or 7, I had no idea what they were advertising, but if you got to wear a dress like that, I wanted to buy it! A few years later, I discovered that the reality was MUCH less glamorous. Re: Times have changedIn the first summer of my life, in 1958 in Winnipeg, my mother would leave me in a carriage outside the neighbor's window while she went downtown. If I cried or fussed, the neighbor would hear and tend to my needs. (This is the story I was told.) Someday I'll Find YouMr. Keen Tracer Of Lost Persons, brought to you on this CBS Radio Station by Kolynos Toothpaste. The headline was the show's theme song. It was on the air from 1937 through 1955. Young MickeyOn display is an Ingersoll Mickey Mouse watch for 3.25. You can get one on eBay for about that much today! Kind of surprisedto see Modess prominently displayed in the front window like that. And what's that bottle cap doing there on the sidewalk? A possible refugee from a game of Skellies? Good Hope Road?I'm guessing this was somewhere on Good Hope Road, SE, which runs from what was then Nichols Avenue, and Naylor Road, or maybe Alabama Avenue. Times have changedToday it would be completely unthinkable (not to mention illegal), but back in this photo's era it was quite routine for a parent to leave an infant outside in the carriage while the parent went into a store. So what WAS Vince?Or, what IS Vince? Never heard of it. And there's no reason to google it since so many Shorpy-ites probably know the answer already. [Class? Anyone...? Anyone...? -tterrace] My guessVince Tooth Powder [A definite possibility! -tterrace] Ice Cream!I have Googled and searched, but can not make out the brand of ice cream. It does seem to have some type of AAA approval! [Wadrex Ice Cream was a brand name owned by Colonial Ice Cream Co. of Washington, D.C. -tterrace] Tony's PlaceGood Hope Pharmacy was located at 1400 Good Hope Road, S.E. The pharmacy survived till the 1960s. It looks to be the same building today. Later uses include the Southeast Neighborhood Action Board (1970s), a methadone clinic (1980s), and Good Hope Seafood (1990s). View Larger Map Babies receiving benign neglectDavidK, your comment hit home with me - my first summer was also in 1958, and my parents were building an addition to our house. They parked my carriage under a shade tree, and the neighbor lady would come and get my Mom if she heard me crying too much! Times were different, indeed. Prams in East BerlinWe were in Germany for the last three years before the Berlin Wall came down. Being a military family, at the time, we had special privileges there. One thing I noticed right away was all of the baby carriages parked outside of stores. Most of them had the babies still in them. In the 80s, no one in American, or even in West Germany, would have left babies unattended. But, there were a few advantages over there and one was a low crime rate, so people were safe leaving their babies alone in their prams while they went inside to shop. Of course, there were also many disadvantages to living there. I know that people in some parts of America did that, at one time. Child abandonmentThose who grew up in the 1950s and before were left outside on the pavement in our strollers or prams whenever our mothers shopped. As well, it was considered very healthy for a baby to sleep out in the pram, even on brisk days, well wrapped up. Not just for general health but to prevent Tuberculosis. When I was crawling, my mother also put me out in the back yard in my harness which was tied to a large screw into the lawn so I couldn't wander off. She would come out periodically to check on me and to move my toys back into reach. Leaving the children out unattended in the pram stopped after the time when we went to the local indoor swimming pool one sunny summer day in 1964. My mother pushed the stroller in under the shrubbery with my baby sister, just a few weeks old, in it and started up the stairs. I was horrified! I made a big fuss because I was worried someone would steal her. "Who would do THAT?" My mother asked. I made such a stink that my mother went and got my sister and brought her inside with us. When we came out, we discovered that there had been a flash rainstorm and the pram, one of those deep British ones, was full to the brim with water. Neither of us said a word but neither me sister or my brother who followed two years later was ever again left alone in the pram. (The Gallery, D.C., John Vachon, Stores & Markets)
Rear Entrance: 1937
September 1937. "House in Negro quarter of Rosslyn, Virginia." Washington, D.C., and the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/14/2013 - 12:06pm -

September 1937. "House in Negro quarter of Rosslyn, Virginia." Washington, D.C., and the Key Bridge form the background for this curious scene. Medium-format negative by John Vachon. View full size. You Are HereThis might be about where present-day N. Fort Myer or N. Lynn Street are now. Interesting to see roads are dirt. The Key Bridge Marriott was built where Arlington Brewing Co. was. Its building was erected around the turn of the century and brewery closed in 1916. Ultimately it became Cherry Smash Bottling plant. The Rosslyn area had been location of saloons and brothels until closed in early 1900s. When I was a child in early '50s it was terminus of RF&P railroad and Capital Transit streetcars and also the location of car lots and pawn shops. QuestionIs that marijuana growing by the side of the house? I'd saythis is a second story job. Current viewThe attached photo was taken in the same general location as this LOC photo. The green space in the foreground of the current photo is the George Washington Memorial Parkway National Park. This portion of the parkway was built between the 1940s and 1950s, and the neighborhood in this photo may very well have been torn down to accommodate it. AnswerAllie: I don't think so. To the extent one can tell at this resolution it looks more like Jatropha multifida. Possible some type of cleome (from the flower stalks), but I don't think any cleome has leaves that are heavily serrated like these. OkraI think that's okra--all overgrown after a long summer. Marijuana?It looks more like castor bean plants to me. They're quite easy to grow pretty much anywhere. The beans are highly toxic though, and are actually used to make the poison ricin. Castor beans most likelyLooking carefully at that whole stand you can see at least 5 clumps of what appear to be what Nicodeme says--castor bean plants. My mother used to grow them and they make beautiful red accents in a garden, often quite tall, too. I think this is a flower border, despite the ramshackle house. Although not particularly well-tended, there does seem to be a rough logic with lower, flowering plants along the front and the taller at the back. Castor plants are often very red. Ought to have been quite a colorful border. More on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_bean_plant Mom locked us out!I wonder if that was the story behind the three boys on the roof, trying to get in through the window; that Mom was out working and didn't get home as early as she expected (or the boys' job doing yard work was finished before expected). Is that a church at one o'clock?(I think those buttresses would have caught my eye if that building still stood.) And for more on the Georgetown Tower of Flour see https://www.shorpy.com/node/5510 Not Mary JaneIf it was they could afford to move to a nicer place. Ancient AutoAnyone know what make and model car that is? It clearly has not moved in years. RepurposingIn the lower right, you can see that the rear doors from the abandoned truck have been used to patch the roof on the structure next to it Where is this?It would appear that the location of this photo is now about where the Key Bridge Marriott is located. Re: Mom locked us out!Not really, that downstairs backdoor is open and ajar. Looks more like these boys are just fooling around, maybe watching the photographer at work. Old W&OD TerminalIf you look off to the left, in the foreground, below the Key bridge you can see the W&OD terminal which was torn down in 1939 to make way for the GW parkway. Address of this houseBased on an aerial photo of Rosslyn at this time and the 1943 Arlington street/lot map (see both attached), the address of this house was 1934 North Fort Myer Drive, on the southwest corner at the intersection of North 20th Street. The present-day intersection is N. Ft. Myer Dr. and eastbound Lee Hwy. Credit to Jeff Clark, John Dowling, and Steve Palmeter on the "Northern Virginia History" Facebook group for help in zeroing in on the exact location. (The Gallery, D.C., John Vachon)
The Alamo: 1937
December 1937. The Alamo movie theater in Washington, D.C. View full size. 35mm ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/09/2011 - 10:51am -

December 1937. The Alamo movie theater in Washington, D.C. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. For RentI wonder how much that room was for rent. [That might be office space. - Dave] The movies"Law of the Ranger" was one of a series of low budget "B" pictures done for Columbia, starring Robert Allen as "Bob Allen." Allen, who was a Dartmouth graduate, basically had his movie career ended with the arrival of singing cowboys like Gene Autry. He basically stopped working in film by 1940 and acted on Broadway. He made his last movie - the totally awful "Raiders of the Living Dead" in 1986 at age 80. He died in 1998 at age 92. While "The Outer Gate" is an entirely forgettable second feature crime movie with a paper thin plot, the three main actors are an interesting group. Ralph Morgan, who is first billed, was the first president of the Screen Actors Guild, as well as the brother of Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard in "The Wizard of Oz." Ben Alexander, in the lead role, spent much of the 1950s as Joe Friday's partner in the TV series "Dragnet." Kay Linaker, who was the female lead in this movie was born in 1913, and is not only still alive but was at one time the oldest College instructor in New England (at Keene State College in New Hampshire). "Shadow of Chinatown" was a 15 chapter serial starring Bela Lugosi acting in "yellow face" which was indicative of how far his career had fallen by this time. It also starred Herman Brix, the 1928 Olympic Silver medalist in the Shot Put, who had just finished playing Tarzan in a serial. Brix would later change his name to Bruce Bennett and became a major star at Warner Brothers. He died in February, 2007 at age 100 of "complications from a broken hip." Re: RentI don't know about the rent, but if you had all those posters today in that condition, you would be able to put a nice down payment on a house. Parallel ParkingIn the days before power steering, that was real good parallel parking by drivers of cars in front of theater. Spacing even good. That is, if they didn't pull to curb one after another! Alamo TheaterThe Alamo was located at 1223 Seventh street N.W. Remembering the Alamo The Alamo Theater was renamed before it was demolished. Do you know what was the name of the theater that was here when the building was demolished? Thank you for your attention to this query. REM StudebakeryWhen I saw this car I felt a little tug because it reminded me so much of my folks' first car, a 1935 Studebaker. Am I correct? The way we wereThe Alamo became the Mid City Theatre before falling to the wrecking ball. http://www.cinematour.com/theatres/us/DC/2.html Research on the Alamo and the Mid City TheatersThis photograph prompted us to do further research on the Alamo Theater by featuring it in our weekly photo quiz on www.forensicgenealogy.info for the week of Nov 16, 2008. Our readers' outstanding research uncovered contradictory information about the address and history of this theater. While the comment above indicates that the address was 1223 7th St, Washington DC, we also found two other addresses: 1293 7th Ave on www.cinematour.com (with the Mid City located at the 1223 address), and 1223 on 9th Ave on the Shaw District site at www.culturaltourismdc.org (The latter might be a misprint.) Whichever is correct, the Alamo and The Mid City were two separate theatres, not the same theatre with different names at different times. I've posted the results of our research on the Alamo at www.forensicgenealogy.info/contest_184_results.html. Colleen Fitzpatrick www.forensicgenealogy.info [1223 Seventh Street would seem to be correct. Washington doesn't have numbered avenues -- there is no Seventh or Ninth avenue. And there is reason to believe there was a Mid-City Theatre at the same address. See the Washington Post clippings below. - Dave] Dave gives me GoosebumpsOh, how I flush! It causes a shiver up my spine and goosebumps on my flesh to witness how Dave stands up for my honor (or at least the honor of my research). Forensic genealogy is a curious new website to me and I am intrigued by their postings. While the researchers at this website do highlight some contradictory information available on the web, it does appear, as Dave documents, that the Alamo was indeed located at 1223 Seventh street N.W. Following up on one of the comments from the aforementioned website, the New Yorker magazine featured a brief humorous observation regarding the Alamo in the Talk of the Town section on Oct 17, 1959. Following up on the address...Following up on Colleen's comment, I looked a little more into the address of the Alamo Theatre. Found this interesting website and picture: http://www.historydc.org/Do_Research/research.asp?ID=128909&IMAGE_NUMBER... Descriptive text lists the photo as... "Commercial buildings on the east side of the 1200 block of 7th Street NW. View to north. Including the Alamo Theatre." As the Alamo is the second building from the near end (and the numbers ascend to the North), 1203 seems reasonable. It also looks like the MidCity Theatre is visible part way down the block (counting by twos) it would be 1223 7th ... Another Photo of the Alamo Showing the CornerHi, Dave's comments appear to be correct. There is a second photo on the historydc.com website that shows the Alamo second from the corner, but with a shorter building on the corner next to it. See http://www.historydc.org/Do_Research/research.asp?ID=128909&IMAGE_NUMBER... So I think we are converging on the address being 1203 7th St. NW. I believe too that the address given on the www.cinematour.com site (1293) was probably a typo, and was meant as 1203. I appreciate everyone's help in clearing up this asterisk in cinema history. I've posted a summary of the discussion on my blog at www.forensicgenealogy.info/blog. Colleen Alamo ReduxOK, I'm convinced that the early quoted Washington Post article referencing 1223 Seventh was a typo and the true address is 1203. Building Permits Charles J. Bedell, owner, to remodel theater, 1203 Seventh street northwest, $200 Washington Post, Jan 18, 1914 Fire Record. 12:22 p.m. - 1203 Seventh Street northwest, film in booth. Washington Post, Dec 23, 1939 A Listing of Washington Movie Theaters - 1984. Alamo, 1203 7th St. NW Washington Post, Nov 15, 1984 Parked CarsNone of these cars is a Studebaker. Although the body style resembles a 1936 (not 1935) Studebaker President, to some degree, the '36 Stude' has only one piece of side trim, does not have chrome headlight buckets, and it has a different radiator mascot. The car on the left looks like a 1935 - 1936 Dodge, but the gas filler is in a different location than I see in other pictures (on the fender instead of on the trunk). The car in the center is a 1936 Chevrolet. The way the car is parked it almost looks like one of the "Outer Gate" movie poster characters behind the car is actually in the back seat. The car on the right is a 1935 Ford. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, D.C., John Vachon, Movies)
Playboy Pop Stand: 1937
January 1937. "Unmarried man who works in the packinghouse at Deerfield, Fla." Photo by ... that seven brand names still around. I wonder If in 1937 "unmarried" was a euphemism for gay. Why mention it? [It also meant ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/15/2013 - 3:36pm -

January 1937. "Unmarried man who works in the packinghouse at Deerfield, Fla." Photo by Arthur Rothstein, Resettlement Administration. View full size. I think this should goin the Handsome Rakes gallery. Just sayin'. Goddess of SpeedThe radiator cap (often called a "mascot") on that Model A looked vaguely familiar to me. It appears to have been inspired by this famous "Goddess of Speed" mascot that evolved on Packard cars through the 1930's -- albeit with an Isadora Duncan-like twist here. A little beyond focus, so it's hard to tell, and I can't find a picture of what I'm thinking it is...perhaps a mascot/hood ornament expert could chime in here. (yes, they do exist(!) A TIP OF THE HAT to Gartholameau! That's the one...judging from the poor quality of the sculpture/casting, this mascot was certainly an aftermarket accessory, and is EXTREMELY rare today. Interesting that our Playboy mounted it at an up-angle on his Model A, so that her arms are level (like the Packard Speed Goddess). "Hobbleskirt"Part of the description of the bottle shape of Coke for many years. I remember that in 1954 or so the 6 oz bottle shown in this picture went from 6 oz to 6.5 oz. Long-lasting brand namesBaby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Vicks cough drops, Vitalis hair lotion, Holsum bread, all still around 76 years later. Edit: after reading another comment I now see the Planters and Nabisco names on the glass containers. Make that seven brand names still around. I wonderIf in 1937 "unmarried" was a euphemism for gay. Why mention it? [It also meant single as opposed to wed. Rothstein's photos were part of the survey documenting people affected by the Resettlement Administration's projects, and as such included demographic data. -tterrace] Those jarsholding Baby Ruth candy bars, National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) cookies and Planter's Peanuts would look great on restaurant counters today. Wish I owned them, then and now. The hatIt's all about that. It's all about styleThe hat's nice, but that well-accessorized Model A Ford is all that and a bag of Planter's. Thanks...for asking the question Manalto and especially for the informative answer tterrace. I wondered why it was necessary to identify marital status in the picture. That said...love pictures where you can enlarge and see all the innocuous "stuff" in the background. Vitalis, anyone? Guess it was important to keep your hair slicked back even if you were being resettled. Radiator CapLotsa bling on the car! A hint of JerryThat goofy smile, that lopsided hat. Could he be Jerry Lewis' uncle? Close but no cigarAfter much searching the Net I was able to find this hood ornament that seems to match. Unfortunately it was on an old auction and they didn't know what vehicle it adorned, but at least it's a close-up. In the Planters JarThey look to me like big, square peanut bars of peanuts held together with sugar. These are still popular today ("Planters Peanut Bars") but they aren't big squares. (The Gallery, Arthur Rothstein, Eateries & Bars, Florida)
The Wayfarers: 1937
May 1937. "Mother and child of Arkansas flood refugee family near Memphis, Texas. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/14/2011 - 4:43pm -

May 1937. "Mother and child of Arkansas flood refugee family near Memphis, Texas. These people, with all their earthly belongings, are bound for the lower Rio Grande Valley, where they hope to pick cotton." Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration. View full size. I wanna know...who the wiseguy is who planted that solitary tree! Cotton-pickin'The generation that had to pick cotton is getting old and leaving us. My "Texas bride" was taken out of high school in Kaufman to pick cotton along with her sisters. To this day she resents not the picking of cotton but the fact her father drove home past the high school, where her friends could see them and know how they had spent the day. Been there, done thatI am now in my seventies and was a child of that lonely, desperate time. My family had pictures of family members that looked almost as gaunt as the lady in the picture. My father worked for a dollar a day and felt blessed to have a cow loaned to him by a neighbor if he would feed the animal. Before my parents died they told us many stories of that timek and by doing this it has kept me grateful for our many blessings. Family PhotoAnother picture of these folks. The AttireThe sadness of the mother's outfit including the sun bonnet is heart wrenching.The style of her clothes, homemade, haven't changed for a hundred years.. She and her family's lives probably wouldn't improve until the 1940s war economy provided jobs. I hope the baby grew up in better circumstances and that fate treated them all better. Holy Smokes!That is an incredible image for all the obvious reasons. The caption says that the "people" are bound for the lower Rio Grande Valley to pick cotton. Looking at the fields in the photo, which are southeast of Lubbock, it appears to be many months before cotton could be picked even in the further south region of the Rio Grande. So, one supposes that they will be out of work for a long, long time in the heat and summer of southern Texas. Catastrophic luckThat poor woman is so down that even her socks won't stay up. I'm at a lossThis is the most powerful image I have ever seen seen on Shorpy.Where do you start.I hope some other Shorpsters with superior commentary skills than I can do this picture justice. HauntingI find it rather haunting that we can't really see the woman's face under that hood. Puts me in mind of that cemetery statue published on Shorpy not so long ago. SymbolismThe way this woman's sun bonnet obscures her face in shadow gives her the eerie appearance of being the Grim Reaper. Hope it was not a sign of things to come for this family. Ups & DownsI suppose we can't really say what their lives were like later. But in my personal experience, more than a few of these Depression kids grew into fortune (or at least comfortable middle-class stability) beyond their wildest dreams. It was the fate of a generation. I'm afraid it didn't go as well for the adults. Many were simply destroyed, body and soul, eaten up by a decade of toil & poverty. Recall the old folks of fifty years ago who died at 54. About that tree . . . I grew up in Tennessee, where there were fields adjoining our fairly new subdivision. I wondered at the solitary trees left standing in those fields as well, and was told it was to give the farmers and animals a break from the hot sun as they plowed the fields. Cotton FieldsI grew up in Alabama during this era and had to work in the fields every day after school and during the Summer. My Dad would plant an acre of cotton just for my brother and me. We had to do all the work and then when it was ready, we had to pick it. Daddy took it off to the cotton gin and we got the money. Yes, we got the money, and it was designated by our Dad to purchase our school clothes! It usually made close to a bale of cotton and sold for about 50.00. So we had around 25.00 each for school clothes. However, besides "our" cotton patch, we had to help tend all our Dad's cotton fields and help pick it when it was ready. Picking cotton is very damaging to the fingers. The pod has a sharp point on each segment of it. Those all open like a flower and the white cotton is exposed. When reaching to pick the cotton, the points of the pod can stick into the cuticles and after a day of reaching for hand after hand of cotton, the fingers and cuticles are very sore and bleeding. It was a long, hard, life for children. But in those days, the families had to work together and the children were needed to help where they could. It never seemed like abuse, we understood. But like most kids, we wanted to play, not work! (The Gallery, Dorothea Lange, Great Depression)
Steuben Glass: 1937
Sept. 8, 1937. "Steuben Glass, 718 Fifth Ave., New York. Exterior, general view. William ... but then I "checked up" on Checker: behold, a 1937 Checker Model Y. (Y as in "Yowsa") Owens-Corning @ Maniak ... Deco building by William and Geoffrey Platt, completed in 1937, and was sold in 1959 to Harry Winston Jeweler. Winston hired Jacques ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/11/2013 - 4:21pm -

Sept. 8, 1937. "Steuben Glass, 718 Fifth Ave., New York. Exterior, general view. William & Geoffrey Platt, architects." Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size. Hacked up hack?I am a streetrodder and general gearhead, and Dennis M's comment about that Checker Cab got me going. At first I thought it was a hacked-up mid-30's 4dr sedan, probably customized by its owner/driver, but then I "checked up" on Checker: behold, a 1937 Checker Model Y. (Y as in "Yowsa") Owens-Corning@ Maniak Productions: And then there was Owens-Corning. The Road To RichesThat Checker Taxi Cab needs a NYC issued license, called a Medallion, in order to pick up fares in the City. First issued during the Depression Era to regulate the number of Cabs on the streets, the cost was $10 yearly. There were about 16,000 Medallions issued, they eventually dwindled to about 11,000. The value of these licenses rose to about $5,000 in the 1950s. The purchases allowed working people and many new immigrants a way to enter the self employed ranks. By working hard, many of them worked 12 and 18 hour days to pay back to the private Medallion Brokers their loans and accrued interest. Once they wholly owned the tags they could make a good living and by hiring another driver to work the times that the owner wasn't using the cab they did even better. To shorten this monologue, the current value of these Medallions is in excess of one million dollars each. About 40% of them are owned by companies that have 6 or more of them. Checker CabLove that Checker Cab! They built some weird looking cars over the years. New York's first glass houseThe Steuben Building (aka Corning Building), an Art Deco building by William and Geoffrey Platt, completed in 1937, and was sold in 1959 to Harry Winston Jeweler. Winston hired Jacques Regnault to redesign the facade in an eighteenth century French style... the original design lasted only 23 years. Ada Louise Hustable called it "architecture as play acting"...and in regard to accepting an imitation as the real thing "wouldn't work with Mr. Winston's jewels and it doesn't really work with architecture either." Harry WinstonThis is now the Harry Winston building. The Times did this great Streetscape about the lot a few years ago. Still extantTwo of the buildings on the right are still around today. The fourth or fifth building behind Steuben Glass, with the big arch in its facade and the address of 10 West 56th Street, used to be Elizabeth Taylor's New York pied-a-terre. A couple of years ago the richest person in the world, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, bought it for $15 million. Somehow I doubt he had to apply for a mortgage. Continuing with the Latin theme, the building next to it, with the Charles London sign, is now the embassy of Argentina. Dalva BrothersDalva Brothers antiques is still in existence. Their website notes that they were founded in 1933 and recently moved from E57th street to a new building on 77th street after 60 years of business there! All those glass blocksSilverton mentioned the Corning building. Pyrex, of Corning, NY, was eventually purchased by the Corning glass company. Oddly enough, all the glass blocks were made by Owens-Illinois, a company that later morphed into Armstrong (who also absorbed the Whitall-Tatum glass co.), then Kerr. Sounds like this building was privvy to a lot of US glass making history at one time. Long Sang Ti and MajongLy Hoi Sang (Ly Yu Sang) was born in 1870 and in 1920 published a book with a descriptive and explanatory story about the game of "ma-ch'iau" or "mah jongg" or mahjong which apparently was all the fad in the 1920s. This book,among others, was published in New York by The Long Sang Ti Chinese Curios Co., inc. (The Gallery, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
Following the Cotton: 1937
June 1937. "Child of Texas migrant family who follow the cotton crop from Corpus ... crop would be between Corpus and the Panhandle in June 1937, but most likely uncomfortably warm, wherever. Depression Of all ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 06/17/2013 - 9:11am -

June 1937. "Child of Texas migrant family who follow the cotton crop from Corpus Christi to the Panhandle." Photo by Dorothea Lange. View full size. So ThinOh, I would just love to sit that poor girl down some place out of the sun and fix her a good meal. Her hands are probably torn up from picking cotton. Her grandchildrenif she had any, no doubt spend a lot time in that pose! At first glance I thought she had a cellphone! Drove through Lubbock last weekAlready 100 degrees there, in early June. Not sure where the cotton crop would be between Corpus and the Panhandle in June 1937, but most likely uncomfortably warm, wherever. DepressionOf all the photos I've seen of the Depression Era, I think this one captures the angst that people felt. This poor girl looks completely sad, thin and exhausted from toiling away her days in the fields. EvocativeDorothea Lange's photos invariably evoke the dislocation, grinding poverty, and unremitting labor confronting migrant agricultural workers. All of this was a mere three generations ago. Yet these folks endured, survived - only to face a world war. Should put our problems into perspective. MomMy mother and her family made their way through Texas in '35, traveling in similar conditions. Seeing Lange's image ... just pulls at my heart and makes me want to cry. Adolescent angstIts hard enough being 12 years old (or so) even in the best of circumstances. This poor girl is growing faster than her family can afford to feed her. Her dress is likely remodeled from one of her mother's. Model TThe car looks like a Ford Model T Coupe circa 1926/1927. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Dorothea Lange, Great Depression)
Buttermilk Junction: 1937
April 1937. "Buttermilk Junction, Martin County, Indiana." Fill 'er up with Ethyl and ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/14/2012 - 2:26pm -

April 1937. "Buttermilk Junction, Martin County, Indiana." Fill 'er up with Ethyl and Acidophilus. Medium-format nitrate negative by Russell Lee. View full size. You won't find this spoton a map today. I'm sure all existing buildings, etc. were bulldozed in about 1940/41 when the Crane Naval Base (actually, its predecessor, the Naval Ammunition Depot) was built here. Linco GasolineLater absorbed by Marathon. *Almost* everythingIt still needs Percy Kilbride. Buckboards1880s version of the pickup truck -- "Hey I need to move some stuff, can I borrow your buckboard?" This place has everything.Horsedrawn wagon, combustion engines, gas and chickens. Would love to find this spot on a current map. I don't know about you but my bones denounce the buckboard bounce, and yes, the cactus does hurt my toes, but I don't see any here so I'll let that slide. Deux ChaveuxThe station wagon in the middle looks to be about two horsepower. That first stepWatch out for that first step "It's a doozie" I'm not a structural engineerbut there isn't much holding up that porch roof and the three 2x4's being asked to do the job are looking a bit tired! LP CoverYazoo Records used this photo on the cover of a blues compilation LP, Lonesome Roads Blues. Interestingly, they used it for songs from the Mississippi Delta. McNab StoreI contacted the Martin County Historical Society, and here's what they found: I did some research today on "Buttermilk Junction." As I stated before, we had never heard of it. I found an old photo in one of our books & it was called "The McNab Store" - now the site of Building 101 on the Crane Naval Depot. Our book does not mention it going by any other name. Jane Marshall/Secretary Martin Co. Historical Society Rock-faced concrete blockIf I'm not mistaken, the façade of what is undoubtedly a balloon-frame building is composed of "rock-faced" concrete block, which would date the structure's origin to no earlier time than 1900, when such block were first beginning to be introduced. [Looks like sculptured tin siding. -tterrace] (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Gas Stations, Russell Lee)
Slingin' Sammy: 1937
September 11, 1937. "'Slinging Sammy' Baugh, new addition to the Washington Redskins. The ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/28/2012 - 1:42pm -

September 11, 1937. "'Slinging Sammy' Baugh, new addition to the Washington Redskins. The Texas Christian U. star is rated as one of the greatest of this generation as far as the passing game goes. Sammy's most recent feat was the practical winning alone of the Green Bay all-stars game at Chicago with a series of sensational passes. He is 24 years old, weighs 190, is six feet tall. Followers of professional football will hear a lot from Sammy this fall." View full size. Posture's good, but...His jazz hands need some work. Greatest QB, everWithout a doubt, this man was the greatest QB in Pro Football history; he invented the modern passing offense, and his jersey number is the only one to be officially retired by the Washington Redskins. And to think, he probably would have gotten into the HOF as a defensive back or as a punter if he hadn't gone in as QB. He played all three ways, every down, and was a great one. He led the league in one season alone in passing, pass attempts, completions, touchdowns thrown, interceptions (not the QB stat, the DB stat; he picked off the other teams' QBs), and punting average. Hail to the Redskins, Hail Victory. Slingin' SammyI remember him in Saturday matinee serials (circa 1940s) where he was cast as the cowboy hero. TimingHe was the right player at the right time. Heck, he'd probably do just fine today! A great Redskin! Never to be eclipsed! Well, maybe by Sonny! Indians on IceThis looks very similar to the current Chicago Blackhawks team jersey, except the Indian is facing the other way. Love the jerseyI wish someone would reproduce it. Blankety BlankHe could sling, all right - and not just the pigskin. The man was a world class cusser. This ol' feller was as crusty as they ever made a man. Check out any interview where the venerable Texan was quoted verbatim. He generally was amenable to talk to the media, and as he grew older his legendary skills in the Art of Profanity also grew incrementally. He was way ahead of his time. He would be perfect for today's satellite radio. PhysiqueIts great to see how excellence doesn't depend on being 6'10 and 300 lbs. King of the Texas RangersI am watching "King of the Texas Rangers," the 1940s movie serial Sammy starred in as Tom King Jr. Apparently he was a much better football player than he was an actor, as this is pretty much the only movie experience he was to receive. Jazz HandsI now realize after looking again that he's posed as if someone is throwing him the ball. At first I thought he was vogueing or making some kind of a silly mime gesture. "Here I am!" Anyway - Hail Redskins, indeed. Bring him BackThe Redskins need him -- NOW. (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Sports)
The Sultan's Palace: 1937
New Orleans, 1937. "Le Pretre Mansion, 716 Dauphine Street, built 1835-6. Joseph Saba house. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/03/2012 - 4:05pm -

New Orleans, 1937. "Le Pretre Mansion, 716 Dauphine Street, built 1835-6. Joseph Saba house. Also called House of the Turk." As well as the Sultan's Palace. 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size. Iron LaceThere is nothing more iconically New Orleans than lacy ironwork balconies and long shuttered windows. I'm so in love with this image! Does anyone know if this building still exists? I'm from Oregon, but I've always loved New Orleans and will be back soon to visit. I'd love to put this gem on my list of places to see if it's there! One last question - is it because of potential flooding that the home appears to be built one story above the street entry level? Do those lower floors get used at all, or are they essentially a basement? IntoxicatingAnyone who has spent time in New Orleans knows there is no other place quite like it. It creates an atmosphere that is almost mind-altering, with the close, sultry, earthy air (no air conditioning in those days) and the curious, intimate stillness that occasionally occurs as in this photo, streets deserted with no signs of life except a bit of trash lying in the gutter. Where is everybody? They are inside and there lies the inspiration for the imagination. Especially intriguing are the rooms behind the real, fully functional shutters, open to air, closed to rain. Are the people within just trying to stay cool with overhead fans, are they cooking spicy, savory red beans and rice, are they making crazy love, sipping sweet tea and sampling pralines, listening to Louis Armstrong on the Victrola? I am transported back there by this so-accurate portrayal of a New Orleans street to where I can smell the smells and feel the surrounding humanity close, but unseen. Thank you Shorpy. As we know, you can leave New Orleans but New Orleans NEVER leaves you. Nice words, OTYYou've captured so beautifully what makes New Orleans unique. It is one of the world's great cities "with a feel" that you just can't and won't find anywhere else. I've been there half a dozen times or so, and every time I visit that curious intimate stillness you speak of strikes me. Harem of HorrorI've spent many a night in this house but I never heard the thump of heads of the Sultan's harem rolling down the stairs ... just the thump of tipsy neighbors falling up the stairs! http://www.nola.com/haunted/harem/hauntings/murder.html http://www.neworleansghosts.com/haunted_new_orleans.htm ["The Sultan's Massacre" makes a good ghost story, although it doesn't seem to be anything more than that -- a story. Any actual massacre would have been recorded in the newspapers of the day, and the "sultan" would have a name. If I had to pin one on him I'd say it was the Muslim entrepreneur Joseph Saba, who bought 716 Dauphine, along with several other New Orleans properties, after coming to America from Syria in 1886. What with Syria being part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, he could have been considered Turkish, although he wasn't a sultan, and seems to have died of natural causes. - Dave] The beauty of cast ironNow that large buildings are made of glass and steel, we see what we have lost: romance. Desiring a streetcarIts a shame that they tore out almost all of the streetcar system, the local traffic from Bywater to Carrollton and everywhere in between is miserable and could be seriously helped by better transit than the buses. Thank goodness for Google maps!This wonderful building still stands at the corner of Dauphine and Orleans Streets. It looks like most of the incredible ironwork is still there, as are the original shutters (some missing a few slats). The trolley car tracks are long gone, torn up and asphalted over, as happened in so many American cities in the decades between 1930 and 1950. Does the personal-injury lawyer who occupies the building know its history and alias? Let's hope a friend sends her to Shorpy if she doesn't. View Larger Map Thanks, Dave, for adding the map link. Shorpy has made a reflex out of the use of Google maps for street-level architectural site obit checking. Yes. The building is still there.This one, in particular has a good ghost story about it. A deposed Sultan rented the place and fillled it with harem girls and armed guards, not participating in the regular Creole culture of the City at all. Every single person in the building was found butchered to death one night. The people were chopped into little bits and the police couldn't tell how many people were killed. So the place is haunted. "They" say that it was his brother, the real Sultan who had the entourage killed, the murderers escaped before the crime was known to the public. I went to a garage sale in the courtyard once and pass by the building all the time. I just love living here in the Quarter. Many homes are elevated or have storage type basements that are actually sitting on ground floor. Re: Iron LaceThe French Quarter is on the highest ground in New Orleans, and since the installation of pumps in the 1890s, flooding, beyond an inch or so in the street, has been a rare event. The lower floors of all buildings in the Quarter are functional. True, subgrade basements are very rare in New Orleans. Dauphine dreamI was a bellman at a bed and breakfast on Dauphine Street my freshman year at Tulane in 1985. I had to be at work at 7 am Saturday and Sunday. I rode my bike from uptown, and this picture really reminds me of the early morning stillness of the Quarter. IronworkMuch of the intricate and beautiful wrought iron that has helped make New Orleans so unique was actually made in the industrial North, mostly Cincinnati. Then it was floated down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River and onto the balconies and steps and whatnot in N.O. (The Gallery, F.B. Johnston, New Orleans)
Last Impressions: 1937
September 29, 1937. Washington, D.C. "Death masks displayed at identification convention. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/12/2011 - 7:19pm -

September 29, 1937. Washington, D.C. "Death masks displayed at identification convention. Mrs. Clark Schilder, wife of the Chief of the Division of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, inspects a death mask of a trapped criminal at the annual convention of the International Association Identification which opened here today. Death masks of criminals are now being generally used by police bureaus throughout the country for identification purposes." View full size. ConventionAh, the ol' annual Deathmask Convention. Those were the days. I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face...I suppose there were a few things you could do with dead people's faces, but I can think of none. Oh wait! Paint-by-number kits. Collect the whole set, Kids! Could be that these wereCould be that these were small-time or unidentified criminals who were killed in the course of their crimes, and the masks were taken to show people who might have known them? TimingThe use of a death mask for identification purposes seems a tad after the fact, doesn't it? Tres CreepyWas the criminal trapped at the annual convention, as so many attendees claim to be? Wonder if any other parts were treated to plaster of Paris. Be Still My Ghoulish HeartPseudo scientific nonsense but I couldn't resist using the comment title. Probably...the death masks were used to connect deceased criminals with unsolved crimes they might have committed before their becoming deceased. In search of PinocchioWhat exactly were they attempting to identify by looking at plaster casts of faces? Other than Pinocchio, I know of nobody whose truthfulness, or lack of it, could be told by studying the shape of a nose. Not only criminals...had death masks. Long before this occurred, death masks were made of famous political leaders, royalty, great composers, lots of people. As a very young kid, our music teacher had a death mask of Bach (or was it Beethoven) in his studio for inspiration. Also, photographing the dead was extremely common everywhere, especially in my Polish ancestors' community in Poland, who would send us copious photos of their deceased friends and relatives in their coffins. It was not all that traumatic for small children who were also taken to wakes and funerals from the time we could behave in a civilized manner. Death is very natural, nobody gets out of here alive. And no, I am not obsessed with death, I'm not a vampire and not afraid of the dark. Oh sweetie...You have seem to have caught some flies in your mesh hat. Last time ever I saw your face...Back then it was common to take death masks of unidentified dead people, both criminals and otherwise, so that they could be identified later on. Before wonders such as the CODIS and NCIC databases and volunteer groups such as The Doe Network, it was almost impossible to match missing persons to unidentified remains, but they still tried. Of course, they would have been more successful if police forces had accepted more missing persons reports. Back then, unless you were a prosperous white male or a dependent of one, your disappearance didn't matter. Don't think it's WashingtonAll the signs on the Wall read Philadelphia. I think this one is not labeled correctly or put in the wrong pile. [This is a convention in Washington with exhibits from various cities. - Dave] Physiognomic IndicatorsThere was a school of thought in criminology which held that there were certain facial features common to criminals. It went hand in hand with phrenology and Darwinism. Perhaps these masks were used to continue the study and prove (or disprove) the theory. The plaster mirrorKind of a parallel in the matching complexions -- eerie. Great-GrandmotherCan someone please tell me more about this picture. Thas is my dad's grandmother. I find things from time to time on my grandfather because of his job with the FBI but never expected to see this. My dad will be stunned. [This is one of thousands of glass negatives in the Harris & Ewing Collection at the Library of Congress. Click here for more info. - Dave] Proof positive!One should never be photographed wearing a hat. Although it might be the very epitome of fashion, it will go out of date and people will subsequently be very amused by it. That one would be passable, if not for the black things apparently buzzing about. (The Gallery, Curiosities, D.C., Harris + Ewing)
Father Duffy: 1937
New York, 1937. "Times Square with Father Duffy statue still wrapped up." Sculptor ... I. Duffy Square and the statue were dedicated on May 2, 1937, by Mayor LaGuardia. Photo by Peter Sekaer. View full size. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/27/2013 - 1:17pm -

New York, 1937. "Times Square with Father Duffy statue still wrapped up." Sculptor Charles Keck's likeness of Francis P. Duffy, the New York Army National Guard chaplain decorated for his service in France with the 69th Infantry Regiment during World War I. Duffy Square and the statue were dedicated on May 2, 1937, by Mayor LaGuardia. Photo by Peter Sekaer. View full size. Camels, peanuts and CokeNew York really does have it all. Peanuts and CokeWhen I was young and Coke was sold in glass bottles, there was nothing better than a bag of salted peanuts poured into the Coke, and consumed together. Working With WalkerIt's interesting to note that the photographer, Peter Sekaer, assisted Walker Evans for a time. Still there but boy has Times Square changedView Larger Map Storied characterBesides being portrayed by Pat O'Brien (who may have played as many priests as Bing Crosby over his career) in "The Fighting 69th" (1940), Father Duffy is said to have inspired the character "Fightin' Father Feeny" in Al Capp's "Li'l Abner." RE: DonT's CommentHey, DonT-- Did you grow up in the South? I always did the bag of salted peanuts into the Coke bottle thing too, and suspected it was a Southern delicacy. Duffy SquareThe northern part of the Times Square "bowtie," north of 46th Street, officially is known as Duffy Square, but as a practical matter the name doesn't get much use. Most people simply refer to the whole assemblage as Times Square. Father Duffy's statue is still there, but has been somewhat overshadowed by the TKTS theater tickets stand and its rooftop viewing area directly to the statue's north, and by an early 1960's statue of George M. Cohan about 100 feet to its south. While much has changed in the ensuing 76 years, there are a couple of surviving buildings. The Taft Hotel on the right is now an exclusive boutique hotel called The Michelangelo, while the building on the left with the Camel Cigarette sign is the Brill Building, which has housed many music publishers and producers ever since it opened in the early 1930's. Have it all?Don't forget Ballentine Ballantine Ale and Beer on the left. The Coke and Planters sign are on the back of the building last seen here: https://www.shorpy.com/node/15565 And then there's the Brill Building, also known as Tin Pan Alley, where music publishers made their home. ((Gads! I misspelled Ballantine?!! I'll have to turn in my Rebus bottle cap collection!!!)) +6Here's Father Duffy uncovered six years later in August 1943. That's my mom in the middle with her friends during a visit that year. PlantersI would love to have seen the Planters sign at night - lit up in its glory! +76Another photo of Father Duffy I took earlier this month. Still looks just as good all these years later. Taft HotelThe Taft may be a boutique hotel now, but in the '60s, it was my idea of New York sophistication. In '61, I was a member of the staff of our Jr. High newspaper (yes, there were such things), up in the Big Apple for the Columbia U. Scholastic Press Association convention and staying at the Taft. Three year later, back to the Taft as a member of our High School concert band, playing at the World's Fair out in Flushing. The Taft had valet service and house detectives and all the things I came to expect in a big city hotel. From Coke to PepsiAnyone else notice that the Coca-Cola sign in the original has been replaced by a Pepsi-Cola ad in Kilroy's picture from 6 years later? (The Gallery, NYC)
Hello Trouble: 1937
December 1937. Midcity Cinema at 1223 Ninth Street NW in Washington, D.C. View full ... feature is "Easy Living" which was released on July 7, 1937. It starred Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur and a young Ray Milland, and was ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/22/2011 - 1:42pm -

December 1937. Midcity Cinema at 1223 Ninth Street NW in Washington, D.C. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the FSA. Confectionery adsLove the ads on the lower front of the store "Welcome Students Get A Lift With A Camel". I had forgotten about the movie stills. Our local theater placed the big advertising poster in a display behind glass and had the movie stills in small frames all around it at one end of the lobby. If I remember correctly, they were also in frames seen from the outside of the theater too. All those beautiful brass fixtures, chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, crystal drop sconces on the walls that dimmed slowly as the movie started, velvet wallpaper, all gone now. Sign in the WindowS.H. Dudley, Promoter and Producer. King's Beauty ParlorKing's Beauty Parlor offers the Poro System of beauty treatment, which, though now mostly forgotten, was probably the most significant and socially important factor in the assertion of Afro-American women's self-esteem in the first half of the 20th century. See the Answers.com bio for Annie Turnbo Malone. At the MoviesA rather curious mix of pictures at the Midcity. They're showing a double feature of two movies made five years apart. The main feature is "Easy Living" which was released on July 7, 1937. It starred Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur and a young Ray Milland, and was written by the great Preston Sturges. The second feature is the real puzzler. According to IMDB, Charles "Buck" Jones made "Hello Trouble" back in 1932. In fact it was release July 15th 1932 meaning it was a week shy of being exactly five years older than "Easy Living." Also visible but nowhere near as prominent is a poster for a serial "The Black Coin". Even it was newer than "Hello Trouble." having been released September 1, 1936. A line-up that would seem to indicate at best a second run house. The cast of "The Black Coin" is sort of interesting. It included a couple of really major silent movie stars - comedian Snub Pollard and Clara Kimball Young - as well as the legendary stunt man and stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt. Canutt was the second unit director who directed the chariot race scene (among others) in the 1960 remake of "Ben Hur." Also in the cast were Dave O' Brien, who would go on to win an Emmy as a writer for Red Skelton, and Ruth Mix, the daughter of legendary cowboy star Tom Mix, in what would turn out to be her final movie. As for Buck Jones, he is considered to be one of the greatest of the "B" movie western actors. He made 57 more movies in the ten years between "Hello Trouble" and his death in 1942 in Boston's Coconut Grove Fire (November 30, 1942). Washington D.C.?Why was the Farm Security Administration taking photos in D.C.? I can understand that the govenment might need images of small town and rural American but this was just a few blocks away. Lobby stillsThose movie stills - which incidentally were almost always displayed in glass-fronted cases outside cinemas in the U.K. - were never actual prints taken from the movie footage. They were specially taken on-set by a studio stills photographer shooting with a 5 x 4 camera from more or less the movie camera position. As a result sometimes, though not often, they showed angles and even set-ups that didn’t appear in the movie itself. Midcity CinemaA chunk of ceiling and chandelier fell on audience in 1945: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/23359/ [Thank you. Now we know the address, which I added to the caption. - Dave] Midcity CinemaThis location is now Washington Convention Center. Mid City AddressTthe address of the Mid City was probably 1223 7th St. During our research on the address of the Alamo, the most reliable source of info was the website about the Shaw District of Washington DC where the theaters were located: http://planning.dc.gov/planning/lib/planning/preservation/brochures/hist... This document mentions the address of the Mid City Theater twice on p. 14, including a reference to the theater's owner: "As early as 1907, Shaw residents could enjoy a vaudeville act or be treated to the new technology of a moving picture show in their own neighborhood. The Happyland, Gem, Alamo, Mid-City, and Broadway Theaters were all built between 1907 and 1921 within five blocks of each other on 7th Street; the Raphael was two blocks over on 9th Street. Of these, the Broadway and Mid-City were owned and operated by African Americans for the largely black patronage in Shaw by this time. In 1919, well-known vaudeville performer Sherman Dudley advertised his Mid-City as “the only theater on Seventh Street catering to colored people that does not discriminate.” Colleen (The Gallery, D.C., John Vachon, Movies)
Celebriquilt: 1937
August 17, 1937. "Joseph's coat of many colors had nothing on this unique quilt which is ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/28/2012 - 3:54pm -

August 17, 1937. "Joseph's coat of many colors had nothing on this unique quilt which is now being completed by Mrs. Ethel Sampson of Evanston, Ill., after six years of collecting. Parts of wearing apparel from President Roosevelt, Mrs. Roosevelt, members of the Cabinet, diplomats and notables from all over. From Hollywood, Bing Crosby sent a tie while Mae West and Shirley Temple contributed parts of dresses. Former Emperor Haile Selassie's neckties and a linen of Windsor are also included on the quilt. Diapers from the Dionne Quintuplets are also prominently displayed." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size. Outsider ArtA classic example. A Stitch in TimeDoes anyone know the whereabouts of Mrs. Sampson's quilt today? Since the reference in the New Yorker described it as a "historical crazy quilt," I would hope that efforts were made to preserve it for the unique collage of history it represents, as well as it being folk art. We have a few quilts in my family from this same time period and they are worth a small fortune - especially to consider they were made of rags. I wonder what the value of Mrs. Sampson's quilt would be now? Recycled MaterialsA quilt made with used diapers? How, er, unique! The Case of the Disembodied LegsI guess that would be the envelope Shirley Temple mailed her swatch in, over on that laptop. Notes From the ProvincesLooks like this quilt got a mention in the New Yorker, in 1942: Out in Chicago, a Mrs. Ethel Sampson is working on a "historical crazy quilt," built up of swatches from the Quintuplets diapers, the neckties of President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace, Wrong-Way Corrigan, Charles Evans Hughes, Haile Selassie, Charles McCarthy, and the late Senator Bora, to say nothing of pieces of dresses worn by Jane Adams, Mae West, Shirley Temple and Amelia Earhart. She is now begging for something worn by General MacArthur, and we hope she gets it. Whenever we begin to fear for the future, we'll switch our thoughts to that quilt and to a woman slapping up and down with her hands full of hammers, her mind full of hell and song. I have to admitThat is an interesting names, but like a previous writer mentioned, it is Pure T UGLY! And the crowning touch...... the head of Dr. Zachary Smith from "Lost in Space". Gams EnclosedThose legs give me the creeps! Although I'm sure there is a chair under the person, you can't see it and the legs appear to be just floating there! Perhaps Shirley Temple mailed her legs along with the fabric swatch! A stitch in timeI wonder, whatever became of that quilt? Was it handed down to her descendants? Sorry, Mrs. SampsonAnd with due apologies to all your descendants who may be perusing these comments, but that has to be the ugliest quilt that has graced these pages in, well, forever. Quilt scenarioMrs. Susan Fitzugh of Mount Vernon, Ill. took a carefully folded quilt to St. Louis, Mo. to the Antique Roadshow. This quilt has been in her family for decades, crafted carefully by her great-great grandmother. She and her friends that traveled with her were floored when Susan was told that the quilt should be insured for about $225,000. Hollywood MomentMarjorie Main sewing Flora Robson's patch to the quilt. Henry McGeefrom the Benny Hill Show stopped by to give Mrs. Sampson a hand! Laptops and laptopsWhen someone mentioned a "laptop" I started looking for a computer! It's a good example of how the language changes. Historical Crazy Quilt on DisplayThe Ethel Sampson Historical Crazy Quilt is in the collection of the Evanston History Center in Evanston, Illinois. Ethel Sampson spent most of her time making this quilt in Evanston and it was donated to the institution in the 1960s by her family after she died. The quilt is a really fantastic piece of work, that captures the history of celebrities and the culture of her time. The quilt will be going on display for the first time on May 6, 2011. (The Gallery, Harris + Ewing)
Bourbon and Coke: 1937
New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1937. "Bayou Pom Pom Grocery, 701 Bourbon Street at St. Peters Street." Ice, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/30/2012 - 11:02am -

New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1937. "Bayou Pom Pom Grocery, 701 Bourbon Street at St. Peters Street." Ice, wood, coal, Coke and oysters -- let me in! 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size. "Twice as good, twice as much"If this was Royal Crown's slogan, it wasn't very good. When I looked at it the first time, it seemed to me that they were saying it's twice as good, quality that is, and twice the price. What they were trying to say is that it was twice the quality (of Coca-Cola) and twice the quantity (The Coke bottle held only 6 ounces, RC Cola was 12.) Pepsi on the other hand started running this jingle on the radio in the late 1930s: Pepsi-Cola hits the spot 12 full ounces, that's a lot Twice as much for a nickel too Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you. By 1939, Pepsi's sales had doubled. Bars, strip clubs, red lights, jazzDon't think there are any grocery stores on Bourbon Street anymore. My last stay in N.O.L.A. was in 1995 when our Saturday night on Bourbon Street consisted only of the above, but I could be wrong. The ravages of old age make it unlikely that I will ever return there but I've had my share of "smokin', drinkin, doin' the hootchy coo." Still, its nice to reminisce as I mull over the song "Don't get around much anymore." Life is good, rejoice and be glad. The Cat's MeowThis location is now the home of The Cat's Meow, which bills itself as World's Best Karaoke Bar. Looks like the lamppost/street sign has survived, though! "Twice as much for a nickel too"In South Carolina they sang "Twice as much for a penny more". We had a tax that made Coke six cents and Pepsi seven cents. S.C. is often a little strange. Still making groceries in the QuarterRouses Grocery at 701 Royal, Quartermaster Deli and Market at 1100 Bourbon. Sadly, the Verti Marte at 1201 Royal burned earlier this year. I'll take two loaves of Liedenhiemer's bread and a Hubigs pie, peach. Send me a truckloadThe price on the oysters seem quite reasonable! Pepsi-Cola "Jingle Tap"My Uncle Sid salvaged an old bar complete with back shelves and installed them in his basement in the mid 50's. As a eight year old, I coveted the big chrome plated Pepsi-Cola soda fountain tap he had. It was complete with the red, white and blue Pepsi logo and contained a music box which played the Pepsi jingle when the tap was activated. My Uncle Ernest was a chemist for Pepsi. He compounded the flavor essence that went into the syrup. I remember going to the corner "party store", as we called them in Detroit, on hot summer days in the 50's and getting a Pepsi or Coke out of the cooler filed with ice water. Although the "pop" was only ten cents, we drank it on the premises to avoid the two cents deposit which we spent on penny candy or baseball cards. Re: The Tipsters Uncle SidVictor Borge had a similar story about a chemist who compounded a new lemon flavored carbonated drink. He called it "5 Up", he put it on the market in 1925 but it didn't sell enough to make it worthwhile. He went back to his lab and reworked the formula, found another backer and released it again in 1928. This time he called it "6 Up", it too failed. He died shortly after, of a broken heart, never knowing how close he came. Pom Pom and Pim PumWe have a West Indian corner market here in Springfield, Mass., called the Pim Pum, which always strikes me as odd. I wonder if Pom Pom and Pim Pum are related and how they relate to groceries. I guess I'll have to stop into the Pim Pum one day and ask them about their name. A bit of Bayou Pom Pom in the Big CityWhat, a reference to "Bayou Pom Pom" passes over the heads of kids these days? Back in the day, the mere mention of this fictional place would raise smiles. The Cajun one-horse town of Bayou Pom-Pom was invented by Louisiana comedian Walter Coquille. His comic monologue "The Mayor of Bayou Pom-Pom" was released on Brunswick Records in 1929, and sold so well that he was brought back to record a number of sequels. This was the first recording of Cajun humor, long before Justin Wilson. Dixie's Bar of MusicThe Fasnacht sisters, Dixie and Irma, opened Dixie’s Bar of Music on 200 block of St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans in 1939. The house band included Dixie herself on clarinet, Judy Ertle on trumpet, Johnny Senac on bass, and Dorothy "Sloopy" Sloop on piano. Advertised as "New Orleans’ Biggest Little Club," Dixie’s became a favorite hangout of local and visiting national entertainers. In 1949, the club was moved to the Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, where it remained a popular spot until it closed in the late 1960s. However true, but now the real story! Miss Dixie Fasnacht has been a New Orleans fixture since the Roaring 20s. She was a musician, singer and leader of nationally recognized "all girl bands." With her sister, Miss Irma, she owned and operated two night clubs featuring live music entertainment. During the '50s and '60s, they lived upstairs from their business, "Dixie's Bar of Music" on Bourbon St. When the first gay carnival ball was raided and attendees jailed, she open her cash register, put the money in a paper bag, and set it off with one of her customers to "get the boys back" many who were regular patrons at Dixie's. The sisters retired from business over 40 years ago, but continued to fuel the social life of the French Quarter. Until recently, they hosted all-day Mardi Gras parties at their Bourbon St. home (with interior patio), every year. There, one could find street-people chatting, eating and drinking with corporate CEOs or celebs. Above all else, one could find a bath room, asprins and delightfully interesting folks. Miss Dixie continued these parties, after the sad loss of her beloved sister. Fasnacht is a Swiss-German synonym for Mardi Gras. An icon of New Orleans gay community, Miss Dixie celebrated her one-hundredth birthday, this year! (The Gallery, F.B. Johnston, New Orleans, Stores & Markets)
Ott's Esso Arboretum: 1937
July 1937. "Gas station in Washington, D.C." Ott's Esso Service, providing our ... The corner at 12th and H has been entirely rebuilt since 1937 which challenges the ability to definitively connect this photo with that ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/27/2013 - 8:30am -

July 1937. "Gas station in Washington, D.C." Ott's Esso Service, providing our second example in as many weeks of gas-station faux flora. Maybe this was a thing back then. Medium format negative by John Vachon. View full size. Feat of clayLove the fancy brickwork in the road. TriangulationCan anyone roughly pinpoint the location of this gas station based on the distances to the cities on the chart? ["Roughly pinpoint" -- phrase of the day! - Dave] One-Stop ServiceOtt's Service Station was located at 12th and H Streets N.W. but branch locations included 923 H St. N.W., 7th and Rhode Island Ave. N.W, and Sherman Ave. and Park Rd. N.W. The corner at 12th and H has been entirely rebuilt since 1937 which challenges the ability to definitively connect this photo with that location. [As indicated by the sign on the mural, the name of the business was Ott's Service Stations, plural, with every station being a "branch." - Dave] I am in total agreement with stevendm on the impressive craftsmanship of the paved street stonework. Hopefully some DC historical trolley buff might be able to collaborate one of the above locations of Ott's Service Stations with the location of tracks along a route of the 1930s streetcar system. Gas artReminiscent of gas station road maps of the period, like this one that's been in our family since the year one, as my mother would say. Doing it rightThere's so much to love in this shot: the two attendants (the guy with no coin changer is probably in training) in the middle of the photo just waiting for their next customer, the (rare) convenient soda bottle machine (certainly 5 cents per 6-oz. bottle) next to the pumps, and the helpful "distance to" signs on the back wall. And what IS that four-story building where the mural is painted? The gas station office is apparently on the right side, where all the action is. Wonderful slice of life from an era where a fill-up probably cost 85 cents. [The other "attendant" is wearing mechanic's coveralls. - Dave] Coin changerA classic from the days when every transit operator carried and received and processed cash. The metallic sound of it was hypnotic, more so in the hands of a skillful and experienced change-maker. I had one of my own at home and would gladly make change for anyone who asked. Still made by a company named McGill, in Illinois. LocationThis looks like it might be on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, maybe around P or Q Streets. So much to seeLaundry out on several clothes lines drying. A couple of great looking convertibles, especially the car on the left side street. The rumble seat open on the other, and it with no windshield! The the fellow looking under the coupe on the far right. And finally the person on the 3rd floor shaking out their throw rug from the window. All at 4:45 PM on another typical summer day! Re: TriangulationBased on the mountain at the back of the picture (which by the way looks strangely like the Paramount Pictures logo), I'd guess we could "roughly pinpoint" the location to exactly somewhere on Planet Earth; more or less. It's at the corner of what and what?I knew this photo looked familiar. That nifty book of vanished DC, "On This Spot," lists this station as being located at 36th and M Streets NW, over in Georgetown. (Page 194 for those of us that want to check). Given the incline of the street seen at the left side of the photo, and streetcar tracks embedded in the street in the foreground, this seems a likely location. [There were numerous Ott Esso stations in the District. - Dave] Not streetcars or trolleysThe fact that there are 3 'rails' reveals that this is a cable car system of the type that still runs in San Francisco. [Most of the system was electrically powered. Streetcars got their juice through a "foot" that ran in the center groove. - Dave] 30th & M Street?Based on this image from the DDOT library it could be the corner of 30th and M Streets. (The Gallery, D.C., Gas Stations, John Vachon)
Stuff It: 1937
December 4, 1937. Washington, D.C. "Note to housewives: your turkey-baking troubles will be ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/13/2018 - 12:20am -

December 4, 1937. Washington, D.C. "Note to housewives: your turkey-baking troubles will be over and the bird you serve for dinner this yuletide will be tender, juicy and flavorsome if you follow the method used by the expert cooks at the Bureau of Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Continual testing and experimenting with various recipes has taught Uncle Sam's cooks that many a prize bird has become a 'ham' when improperly prepared. The best recipe so far discovered by the Bureau of Economics is demonstrated in the following set of pictures, made under the supervision of Miss Lucy Alexander, Chief Cooking Specialist. Miss Alexander, a graduate of Vassar and the University of Illinois, has been on her present job for 11 years. Mrs. Jessie Lamb, Assistant Cook, is stuffing the turkey under her watchful eye. The turkeys on the table will go into the ovens at regular intervals, and be tasted and judged by a group of experts who are determining which diet and feeding program will produce the best flavored meat." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size. Don't leave us hangingBut what is the best way to prepare a turkey? And is roasting them on their sides part of the best way? Too CleanStuffing a turkey is a messy job but you wouldn't know it from looking at this photo. You could perform major surgery in this room just by pushing the turkeys off to one side. "Flavorsome"Is that a real word? re: FlavorsomeI suppose that's a few notches below 'flavorful.' Tiny TurkeysThese turkeys are tiny compared to birds today. These would be in the range of only 8-10 pounds, whereas most commercial turkeys today are 14-20 pounds. Look at the pronounced breast bone without nearly as much muscle mass as modern turkeys. This means these birds were almost certainly free-range rather than caged. Personally, I like wild turkey best, but a free-range bird is pretty darn good. The cooking for one of these is completely different than modern birds, too. These need a lot more basting, more moisture to start with, and are best served brined. Modern birds are almost all previously brined or injected with some salty soupy solution that pumps up the weight and keeps the bird moister. No wonder turkey had such a dismal reputation with housewives for so long - dry dull meat was the norm! And how about those spiffy "nurse in the kitchen" outfits? [Below, the turkeys in (or on) their cages in Beltsville, Maryland. - Dave] Miss AlexanderAny more backstory on her? She seems supremely over-qualified to be a single lady cooking turkeys for 11 years. Turkey Tasters Washington Post, Oct 5, 1938 The Federal Diary By Scott Hart. . . . the pleasant odor of roasting turkey comes to the upper corridors of Agriculture South Building later this month, as the Bureau of Home Economics begins experimental cookery work. And the last thing heard of the champion turkey carver (he carves the scientifically-cooked birds) was that he was on vacation. The professional turkey tasters: (they taste the cooked birds to test seasoning and flavors) are expectantly waiting. ... Washington Post, Nov 18, 1938 The Federal Diary By Scott Hart. ... NOTES: Again on the subject of the turkey carving experiments in Home Economics, Agriculture. we suspect that those bored looks on the faces of the seven tasters are stage faces. The conclusion ls based on this: Six of the seven who sit about the tables three or four times a week were the tasters of last year - and there is nothing in the Civil Service rules and regulations that say they have to volunteer a second time. Anybody who ever saw Miss Lucy Alexander pull one of those golden brown birds from the experimental ovens on the sixth floor knows how much persuasion would be required to get somebody to taste of that chunk of juicy meat ... Thanksgiving memoriesI grew up in New York City. Thanksgiving Day, Mom would make my Dad, me and my little sister leave the apartment to go see the Macy's parade while she cooked. We'd return 5 hour later to awesome smells and even better tastes. No science there. Another Federal WasteMs. Alexander is now eleven years at the federal teat putting dressing inside turkeys where they can quickly turn into a mass of salmonella. Why on earth are the taxpayers paying for research that is done so much better by the private sector? Dressing should never be cooked inside the turkey! The federal government's benevolence apparently does, indeed, go back a long time. Imagine paying to set up all that kitchen gear, paying all those people, and getting such meager results. [Do a little research I think you'll find you are quite mistaken. Class? - Dave] Small turkeysI walked into the kitchen and there were eight wild turkeys on my deck totally ignoring my cats at the sliding door. But these guys are still young and have to be at least 20 pounds! Hmmm, maybe I won't have to buy a bird. re: Miss AlexanderThe Washington Post, Times Herald, Jan. 30, 1969 Lucy M. Alexander, Agriculture Specialist Lucy Maclay Alexander, 80, an Agriculture Department home economist for 38 years, died Jan. 22 in Belleville, Ill., after a long illness. Miss Alexander retired in 1953 from the Agriculture Department, where she conducted meat and poultry research and wrote several home economics publications. She moved to Belleville to join her family in 1964. Born in Pennsylvania, she held bachelor's degrees from Vassar College and the University of Illinois. She received the Department's Distinguished Service Award in 1950. She is survived by a brother, R. P. Alexander, of Belleville, and a sister, Mrs. F. A. Ingalls, Palo Alto, Calif. Bureau of EconomicsDoes this department still exist? Or does one go to the the Butterball hotline for one's turkey help in 21st century America? ThanksgivingOur Canadian Thanksgiving was a month ago, of course. My mother loves to describe the first American Thanksgiving she celebrated (Americans like to think they "invented" Thanksgiving but in England the end of harvest was long celebrated with a Thanksgiving feast). My father was an artist living in Greenwich Village and Mom invited all his friends for a dinner in their cold-water walk-down flat on Charles Street. She recalls it as a wonderful, succulent dinner. Several years ago, I talked to one of the friends who attended that dinner and he told me the "real" story. Apparently, my mother had never cooked a turkey before (this being just after the War with the attendant rationing and shortages). Apparently, what came to the table was a none-too-well-cooked bird which everyone politely nibbled at. Knowing my mother's cooking, I believe his version of the dinner. They look so forlornCreating a flavorsome turkey is a loneful job, I suppose. L. M. Alexander, Food Scientist extraordinaire Apparently Lucy was a Food Scientist and had numerous publications of her research. Here's two of my favorites: Alexander, L.M., Schopmeyer, G.E., and Anderson, R.B.: "A Standardized Method for French Frying Potatoes." Nicholas G. Barbella, O. G. Hankins and Lucy M. Alexander: "The Influence of Retarded Growth in Lambs on Flavor and Other Characteristics of the Meat" The old girl was interested in much more than turkeys. (The Gallery, Christmas, D.C., Kitchens etc., Thanksgiving)
Best Beer in Town: 1937
New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1937. "Tortorich Restaurant, Royal Street." 8x10 inch acetate negative by ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/11/2012 - 11:50am -

New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1937. "Tortorich Restaurant, Royal Street." 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size. "Every bottle sterilized"Two men are ordering in a restaurant and they both ask for a glass of water. One man adds, "And make sure the glass is clean!" When the waiter comes back, he's got two glasses of water in his hand and asks the two men, "Which one of you wanted the clean glass?" Nichol and MayBack in the 1950s Jax had some of the most entertaining TV commercials of the day, like this one with Mike Nichols and Elaine May: House of SchenleyIt's been ages since I've seen that name (their logo is printed above the corner entry to this establishment). We always had liquor in our house and I had all but forgotten about Schenley's. My father was a good friend of the proprietor of the "package store" in our small town and when he bought spirits there, the man always gave him the little "gifts" distributed by the liquor companies. We had in our home endless glass cocktail sticks, bottle top pouring spouts, beer trays, glasses and other novelties which were marked with advertising gadgets. I remember toy white seals (the kind that frolic in the ocean) which were tied around the bottles of Carstair's White Seal liquor and black and white scottie dog figurines from Buchanan's scotch. We just do not see these giveaways anywhere today. As for Jax Brewery, it still exists somewhat intact although it has been gentrified into a trendy and stylin' multi-level tourist attraction full of great places to leave your money. Thanks Shorpy for testing my memory yet again; it is the reason I cannot go even one day without looking at this best ever website...may I say I love you? Tortorich RestaurantOpened in 1900 by Louis Tortorichi. SazeracNext door at 437 Royal was the pharmacy of Antoine Peychaud. He invented "Peychaud's Bitters "which along with absinthe and Rye is basis of the Sazerac cocktail. Some say it is the oldest cocktail (probably a myth). The bitters are still around, and the Sazerac is a New Orleans favorite. If its appropriate, here's the recipe: 2 ounces Rye Whiskey 5 dashes Peychaud's Bitters 1 sugar cube splash of Absinthe lemon peel Muddle the sugar with the Peychaud's Bitters. Splash the Absinthe into a glass and pour in the Rye followed by the Bitters. Place the lemon peels in the glass and toast to a good life. And Good Eats, too!Judging by the "menu" written on the walls and windows, Tortorich's is exactly the kind of neighborhood watering hole I remember from my youth, and which I hope still exists. I'll bet the food was delicious. But Not for MeAnd the sad part was that Jax *was* the best beer in town. Have you ever had the swill that is Dixie? It may hearten some to know that the regional brewery tradition of South Louisiana is being kept alive by Heiner Brau and Abita on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain and that both outfits make truly excellent beers. 441 RoyalCorner of Royal and St. Louis. Of Tortorich Restaurant, the 1938 WPA New Orleans City Guide says: "well known for Italian food and seafood specialties." The DoorThanks Brooks for the before and after.Why is it when a structure is updated one of the first features to go is the screen door? It is functional, handsome and of all the sounds I have stored away in my feeble memory bank, the sound of a screen door opening and slamming closed is one of my most cherished. Home of the JaxAlthough Jax beer is associated with New Orleans, it really belongs, as the name implies, to Jacksonville. And here is more than you would ever want to know about that. Point of Sale promotionsOTY's eagle-eye spotting of the Schenley sign brought back lots of memories. Two of my prize possessions as a kid were curbside discards thrown out by a liquor-supply salesman who lived two doors down: a Carstair's White Seal table lamp (the seal had the top of the lamp balanced on its nose, and the lampshade revolved -- How great was that to put on the desk in my room?), and a huge four-color map issued by Schenley's at the beginning of World War II that I put up on the wall of our den and used to learn the names and places of just about anywhere in the world. The Other side of the Family!I never thought I'd see any part of my family on Shorpy ... But wonders never cease! Here is my wife's family in front of me. When the Tortorici family settled in the United States, some went to New Orleans and some landed here in Chicago. Both sides of the family produced great food and greater cooks. I am the fortunate recipient of both great food and a fine wife. (The Gallery, F.B. Johnston, New Orleans, Stores & Markets)
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