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Greystone: 1940
... Vachon. View full size. Things that go bump in the night Imagine hearing a door shut or footsteps at 2 a.m. -- there wouldn't ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/02/2019 - 1:03pm -

April 1940. "Victorian house. Dubuque, Iowa." The old A.A. Cooper mansion, "Greystone," demolished in 1956. Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon. View full size. Things that go bump in the nightImagine hearing a door shut or footsteps at 2 a.m. -- there wouldn't be enough covers to hide under. A Funny Looking DogOr caught in an awkward moment? Whuzza?What is that on the sidewalk in the lower left part of this photo? I see a bird on the back of a two-legged pig. Wow - love this house!I lived in an upscale neighborhood in Toronto (Rosedale) when I was young with houses in a similar vein (Victorian) but nothing as grandiose. The Greystone takes the cake, all the cakes I'd wager. 35 rooms..."Patterns in the flooring were formed using different species of hardwoods. An elevator in the residence and intercom system made the home unparalleled for its time. Ceilings were 18 feet high, doors were handcarved, and windows were stained glass or beveled." And then torn down a mere 16 years after this photo was taken - to make space for a parking lot! Crime against Humanity I tells ya! Read more about this tragedy and wonder here: http://www.encyclopediadubuque.org/index.php?title=GREYSTONE If the image makes it ... it's titled "Dawn" and is one of the stained glass windows from Greystone. (The Gallery, Dogs, John Vachon, Small Towns)
Happy Halloween: 1958
... somewhere in Pennsylvania. Big brother is ready for a night of trick-or-treating. Rob from the rich, and share with your understudy! ... stations played the National Anthem and signed off for the night around midnight. And that if you turned on the TV early the next morning, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/31/2023 - 1:02pm -

October 1958, somewhere in Pennsylvania. Big brother is ready for a night of trick-or-treating. Rob from the rich, and share with your understudy! Our fourth selection from a batch of Kodachrome slides found on eBay. View full size. 1950's TV MemoriesFirst we were told we had to sit at least five feet away from the screen or we would contract radiation sickness. There were pieces of filmy plastic one could purchase in transparent colors like green and yellow to instantly turn a black and white into a color TV (whatever color the plastic was). There was often nothing on in small towns in the hills that could receive only one or two channels, except a test pattern, but we would watch it anyway. At some time during the life of everyone's TV, there would be a failure of the "vertical/horizontal" knob which would cause the picture to continuously flip and STILL we would watch it. I remember my amazement of seeing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth taking place in Great Britain, in my own home in a small town in Ct. That was truly a miracle to me. Needless to say, I now find Skype absolute magic. We can only speculate at what is coming next. Costumes by Irwin Mainway no doubt.We all wore them back then, and most of us survived. LegsWhen those kind of legs started showing up I thought they made otherwise nice furniture look chintzy. Place Your BetsGuess how long after exiting the house before Mom or Dad was carrying Robin's: bow, treat bag, younger brother. Safety panel on TVI notice that the parents of Robin Hood and Wonder Bread opted for the transparent safety panel in front of the picture tube of the TV. When my older brother and I, as young adults, removed the defunct TV component from our parents’ massive wooden hi-fi cabinetry (to create extra storage space), we took the TV - with safety screen attached – to a local dumpster so we could toss it from a high place and watch it explode. Far from breaking, the TV hit the bottom of the dumpster and bounced back up about five feet. Like much else back then, those things were tough. [That "safety panel" is a glare shield. - Dave] Technical Aspects AsideThat RCA simply cries out for a pair of rabbit ears. Safety glassThe glass screen cover wasn't an option or a glare shield, though many of them were tinted to increase the contrast. It was there to protect the unbonded picture tube from being hit and imploding, thereby causing serious injury. It's Its other function was to contain the flying glass should the tube implode for some other reason. Pretty much every set from 1946 till 1960 or so had a safety glass. Sets starting in the early 60's either had the safety glass bonded directly to the face of the CRT or they were banded to contain the glass in the event of implosion, after that the extra glass in front of the screen was not needed. My User Name will explain why I know this stuff. [The outer flat panel, made of safety glass, was designed to reduce glare and ambient reflections. Hence names like "Glare-Guard." (And something that implodes doesn't pose much of a risk to anyone unless they're inside the picture tube.) - Dave] The family's pride and joy on displayThe family is obviously proud of their kids, but they are also showing off their new 21" color TV. In 1958, color TV was still quite a rarity in the home, since RCA introduced their first color set, the 15" CT100, in 1954. [That's not a color TV. - Dave] [RCA used a similar cabinet for black-and-white sets and the one in our photo most closely resembles the 1956 Glenwood 21 Deluxe in several details. Also, the screen mask isn't quite the same shape as those used for the round color tubes. - tterrace] The TVForget the creepy John Wayne Gacy meets Wonderbread and store bought Robin Hood costumes. Yuck. That TV is the star of this scene. I can see it is RCA Victor at the top. I think it is black and white because the color sets of that era had a round sided picture tube. Only the b&w sets had a more squared green shape. I can see somebody has been going overboard on the Lemon Pledge. This family loved that set. I also can't read the script strip at the bottom of the speaker. It might be a remote control or other advertising slogan, not the model name. [It's the "eluxe" part of "Deluxe," the "D" having broken off. - tterrace] Winky DinkThe comments about the safety cover remind me of the vinyl screen you got so you could draw on the screen while watching Winky Dink. I think it was so you could draw paths to help him escape from some plot or another. I can smell that TV from hereThere were nearly 20 tubes in that thing, warming up the room and lending a faint smell of roasting dust and melting wax capacitors. Our kids will never know the joy of watching the picture dwindle to a shrinking white rectangle, then a little bright white spot in the middle of the screen when the set was turned off. Smell-a-VisionNixibunny. My very first thought was the smell that the television would emit. Your description is perfect. I might also add the sounds it would make as it warmed up as well. Those hidden control knobsIf I'm not mistaken, that center panel below the screen opened (downward, I believe) to reveal all those little knobs we kids were not supposed to touch like the vertical, horizontal, contrast,and brightness. Without rabbit ears they probably had a 75 ohm lead up to the roof antenna. Eventually Dad would get real sophisticated and install a "tenna rotor" device that would rotate the roof antenna with just a twist of the dial that sat on top of the TV! Warming up the TVMy 30-something children don't know whether to believe me when I tell them that TVs of the era needed a few minutes to "warm up" before the picture appeared and came into focus. Also, they seem skeptical when I tell them that TV stations played the National Anthem and signed off for the night around midnight. And that if you turned on the TV early the next morning, you were likely to see nothing but a test pattern, which usually included a Native American in a headdress. Is it just me? So I'm the only one interested in the costumes and not the TV set? LOL. Robin Hood is store bought but the clown looks like it could be homemade. I'd love to know what sewing machine was used and if it was a hand-me-down from Big Brother. Was the material purchased only for this costume or did Mom have a matching apron? A picture says a thousand words but I'd like a few more in this case! And speaking of explanations, can anybody describe the candy that went into that bag? Was anything individually wrapped back then? Could you get "fun size"? Is little sister dressed as a clown,or a loaf of Wonder Bread? Kid picture!Is it just me, or did every American have a picture of their kids in that exact same frame? We had one of me holding the cat named Nameless. I was 8 in 1958. Sorry, we had a 190inch Zenith (or was it Admiral?) in a black metal case with the speaker and controls on the side ... sitting on a wrought iron swivel stand. In the den downstairs, not the living room. I wasn't going to mention the TV, too late now. This photo reminds methat I closed on the house in which I live now on October 31, aka Halloween. No ghosts or goblins to speak of ... because they told me to keep my mouth shut. VIPs didn't wait for warm up.Waiting for the old tube type TVs to warm up was a problem of the hoi polloi. Presidents of the U.S. had better things to do than to wait for the many White House TVs to stabilize as they flitted around the various work areas (Richard Milhous Nixon was particularly irked by this) so their TVs were rewired so the tube filaments/heaters were on a separate circuit that was on all the time and was only shut off if a set wasn't expected to be used for an extended period. When they entered a room and powered on a TV (usually with the switch at the lower end of the volume control knob rotation range), it sprang to (stable) life almost instantly as it merely had to turn on the B+, grid and flyback etc. voltages. Maybe not so surprisingly, it was found that this didn't particularly cause the tubes to burn out that much more quickly as it eliminated many of the on-off thermal shocks that were the bane of tube filament life, which was in turn responsible for most sudden tube failures. Solid state electronics brought instant TV warm up to the masses, but things seem to be regressing as we now have to wait for interconnected everythings to boot up and connect to the mothership. _etachedThere's a running joke about how many of this era RCA sets have the D broken off the Deluxe script, possibly snagged by dust rags. It's so common that there were reproduction scripts made. This photo proves it started very early on. B/W vs ColorMy grandfather refused to give up the first TV he purchased in about 1955, maybe 1956. It was a black and white, only thing he could get then. When color came out, he saw no reason to have one. I don't believe he was being cheap, contrary to what my mother thought. He finally ended up with a color TV when my mother bought one, set it up, and took his black and white away. My grandmother loved the new color set, so my grandfather lost out. And I think I have a lot of my grandfather in me. No, I don't have a black and white TV, but, I much prefer the old black and white photos on this website than any of the original color ones. I will admit, though, that this one has to be one the best black and white color combos on the site: https://www.shorpy.com/node/25954. Wracking my brainKathyRo, I came along a few years after this photo, but I don't really remember any fun size candy bars, and folks I knew were definitely not springing for full size candy bars. We generally got several pieces of small, individually wrapped candy. The ones I remember were hard candy, Smarties, Dum Dum and Tootsie Pops, Tootsie Rolls, and the dreaded Peanut Butter Kisses. If folks had a good year, you would get a box of Good N Plenty, Milk Duds or Boston Baked Beans. Finally, you might get a homemade treat like cookies, which were good, or popcorn balls, which always seemed to me to be made from leftovers from last month's movie nights. This is what I remember in my town - other areas might be different. OMNISCIENTDave, how do you know everything? [Deitization. - Dave] Re: Kid Picture! -> Happy's StoryWhile it's not 100% the same, and it definitely came later, I still have a picture frame (rounded, not squared, insets, the difference) just like that one in my office at home. Of course, the office used to be my bedroom, when I moved into the house at 2 years old in 1968, before moving into the larger, side bedroom when my sister got married in 1978, before moving out back in 1992; I've just moved back into the home after inheriting it in 2016 with my parents passing. The picture has NEVER had a child in it, instead, taken in said 1968, it has the picture of a dog, blown up from an old photograph taken at Christmas 1968. Said dog, "Happy," was a good girl, as little as I can remember of her from life, who somehow, even though she was probably only three or at most four at the time (she was a street rescue in 1963), knew my mom was pregnant with me prior to her giving birth and was my mom's constant companion during her (tough) pregnancy (my mom ended up with a classic Near Death Experience which I've only just talked with my wife of 27 years about last week at the end, to explain how tough it was). Happy was, by all reports, devoted to me. In August, 1970, while walking through the under construction neighborhood around the corner from our home, I was walking/toddling in the road, while my parents and older sister walked in the grass. Happy was concerned, and kept trying to grab me and pull me onto the grass. A car came around the corner, driven by a newly licensed teenager arguing with a friend at too high a speed, not seeing the child in the road. Happy switched to pushing instead of pulling and pushed me out of the path of the car. My father carried her dying body back to our house; she died on the way home, only a block away, and we ended up burying her in the back yard. My father disliked being on that road for the rest of his life, and would go the long way if possible to avoid it when we had to go into that area. My father loved dogs, but the only portrait he ever had of a dog of his was Happy (he did, admittedly, have lots of just photographs of other dogs), which had pride of place on his dresser from 1970 until 2016, when I inherited it. I have been told by a few so-called psychics who don't know this story that I have a guardian angel, always with me, a small-medium black and white dog (yes, a good description of Happy). Over the years, I've only met one dog, no matter how vicious or "Guard Dog"ish, who didn't warm up to me within minutes of meeting me (the one exception was psychotic, and ended up needing to be put down, and even that dog was generally friendlier with me even than his owner, and no, it was a Cocker Spaniel), and I thank her for that. She'll have pride of place in my home for as long as I live, just as she did in my fathers, still in that frame. Re: WrackingThe prime stuff in the loot bag were chocolate bars, smaller than the full-size bars that cost a dime and still smaller than the nickel versions, but larger than the mini-bars of today. Many Hallowe’en kisses, which was taffy of an indeterminate brown/gray color, and which seemed lame at the time but are for me, now, at the top of the nostalgia list. There were hard candies, too, either individually wrapped or a mini LifeSavers tube, far too many suckers, caramels, definitely Tootsie Pops and Tootsie Rolls, small bags of assorted squishy things or jelly beans, then loose stuff like apples or peanuts in the shell, thrown in by the handful. I don’t think there were mini bags of chips back then in the sixties. As for the apples, I didn’t eat them like treats because they weren’t treats, they were food, so I gave them straight to my mom who used them for lunches or desserts. (ShorpyBlog, Halloween, Kids, Pa. Kodachromes)
The Christmas Kid: 1958
... is now and why these photos ended up for sale? O Holy Night On the hall table is a wind up cathedral made from glow in the dark ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/01/2012 - 6:44pm -

Christmas 1958 somewhere in Pennsylvania. The young man we last glimpsed dressed up for Halloween, seen here in our fifth slide from a batch of 35mm Kodachromes found on eBay. I am imagining carols on the hi-fi, grandparents in the next room and delicious aromas wafting in from the kitchen. View full size. Visions of sugar plumsLooks as though little Timmy received one (small) Christmas Eve gift, right after the children's program at church, and can you imagine how excited he is, waiting for tomorrow morning? You know he'll go to bed exactly when Mom tells him to tonight, since he's already seen the bounty of well-wrapped gifts under the real tree -- even some in that nifty decorated box that looks like our chimney! Chalk?The box he's holding looks like it might be Sidewalk Chalk, used for just that, drawing on the sidewalk in a non permanent format. [Looks like this one. - tterrace] Classic ChristmasKids dressed up, and a real Christmas tree. It doesn't get any better. My parents got an aluminum tree in the mid '60s because it didn't shed needles. After the holidays, we would remove the "branches" and store them in cardboard sleeves. The "trunk" was a a metal pole. The whole thing went into a box waiting for next year. Red ornaments were the preferred color scheme. I'll try to dig up a picture of our Jetsons Christmas! O Christmas TreeRemember that tinsel, made out of lead? And what a pain it was to put on the tree? Missing somethingWhat would really top off this photo would be bubble lights on the tree. I wonder where this family is now and why these photos ended up for sale? O Holy NightOn the hall table is a wind up cathedral made from glow in the dark plastic; we had the identical one that came out on my mother's table every year well into the 90's. And there's real lead tinsel on the tree; nothing ever hung like that tinsel. Wow Cufflinks!On such a little guy. And there are two gorgeous Steiff tigers on the side table. I would love to have one of those! [Here's one. - tterrace] Tilt-top tableResearch indicates that the term my mother applied to the type of table on the right is not precise, as the entire surface did not tilt; it was in two halves, and here we see it with one half folded over the other. Nevertheless, this example is a near-twin of ours, which was kept with one half angled up and leaning back against the railing of the stairway landing in our living room. It, too, was a favorite platform for Christmassy things. Regrettably, our archives do not have a good photo of it. Despite the incorrect designation, I always liked the sheer alliteration of my mother's name for it. Little manThe more special the occasion, the more like a miniature adult the child was made to be. So the kid has his hair slicked to the side and is made to wear leather shoes, scratchy wool pants, stiff white shirt, vest, bowtie, and – the least child-like accessory / accoutrement / item of bling – cufflinks. [Another period example, from 1955. I got to go in stocking feet, though. - tterrace] Tilt-top tableThe table is properly called a card table. Card tables were popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The top folded over itself when the table was stored against a wall. When the table was pulled into the room, usually facilitated by casters, the top could be swung down and rotated 90 degrees so that the seam between the halves was supported by the skirt. It was thus turned into an approximately square tabletop, and often used for playing cards. Rotating the tabletop often revealed a hidden tray, which in period was usually lined with marbleized paper. Christmas Card PerfectWow! What a great pic. Looks very Christmas card worthy. This brings back so many memories of what Christmas was like when I was a kid. I LOVE all of Shorpy, but especially these old color photos from the 50s. By the way, is there anything better looking than a good old-fashioned Kodachrome photo? It also makes me long for my old Petri rangefinder loaded with Kodachrome 64. Thanks. The Hall TableWe also had a table just like this; it's called a "game table." The top swivels, then the top part of the table unfolds to create a flat surface. Like tterace's table, ours was kept with one half of the table top opened and leaning up against the wall. I suspect that the table was from the 1930s or early forties as it had belonged to my aunt prior to my getting it. My husband did not like the table and made me get rid of it when we moved several years ago. I have rued that decision many times since. (Christmas, Pa. Kodachromes)
J&L: 1941
... industrial might, just months after this was taken. NIght Shift Reminds me of this pic: https://www.shorpy.com/node/22870 . ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/05/2020 - 1:45pm -

June 1941. "Jones and Laughlin steelworks. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." Medium format acetate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. Long goneHard to believe all of that no longer exists, isn't it? Hard to Fathomthat the Japanese so misunderstood the folly of attacking a country with such massive industrial might, just months after this was taken. NIght ShiftReminds me of this pic: https://www.shorpy.com/node/22870. Wonder what the textiles would look like if they were neighbors with the wind blowing towards the textile mill. Soft SteelSurreal atmosphere of a harsh environment. Well done, yet again, Mr Vachon. (The Gallery, Factories, John Vachon, Pittsburgh)
Hotel Astor: 1909
... Galiza, Spain) [ Click here. - Dave] Per Night I wonder what the rates were in 1909. Fiat: made in USA Fiat ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/18/2012 - 3:40pm -

New York circa 1909. "Hotel Astor, Times Square." Note the elaborate roof garden. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Shades of greatnessAnother great building from the golden age of window awnings! I had nothing to lose at the Astorback in '57, when I was a new immigrant with a couple of bucks in my pocket, nursing a 15 cent draft beer at the bar. It was where I went to get away from the cheap rooming house on 36th Street. Ten years later, when they tore it down, that little beer was something with an olive in it and I spent more than two bucks tipping my doorman at the place where I still live. I was sorry to see my old hangout turn to dust. Reach for the starsNew York Times, 1920: Down near Times Square the Hotel Astor Roof Garden and Belvedere Restaurant make it possible for the wayfarer to leave the torrid stretches of Seventh Avenue and in a few moments find himself in a real garden surrounded by flowers. There is the open-air dancing floor and the restaurant is conspicuous for dangling ferns and trailing vines. A unique feature of the restaurant is the gabled-glass roof over which flows a miniature Niagara. Taxis of the Marne?I'm not aware that Renault automobiles were sold in America that early, but look at that taxi stand. There's a remarkable resemblance to the cabs that saved Paris in 1914. [The Renault Taxicab Company was incorporated in New York in 1907 and operated out of the Renault garage. - Dave] Thermos: The BottleAnd here I haven't even seen the film yet. Have you heard that Mimsy StarrJust got pinched in the Astor bar? Cole wasn't writing about the roof garden, but I've always loved that line. Additional pictures & story of the Astorhttp://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON023.htm Hotel Astor Roof GardenAre there pictures of the Roof Garden? What is the building that replaced this hotel when it was torn down? Xesús Cociña Souto (Santiago de Compostela, Galiza, Spain) [Click here. - Dave] Per NightI wonder what the rates were in 1909. Fiat: made in USAFiat automobiles were"home made" upriver 75 miles in a beautiful art deco factory. The building became Western Printing home of all the Dell comic books you may have read long ago. All gone now. A Staples has since been built on the site. [Upriver from Times Square? Everyone into the canoe! - Dave] Good one! Yup, better than "up the river" some thirty miles (give or take). 6-6-66, 5-5-55Back on June 6, 1966, at 6:06 p.m., a group that had last met on May 5, 1955, at 5:55 p.m. gathered once again as planned at the Astor Bar to savor the moment. On September 9, 1999, at 9:09 a.m., at 9th Avenue and 19th Street, we had planned to meet again, but fate intervened and the venue was changed to the Deer Park Hotel in Newark, Delaware, close to the setting of our first gathering. Talk about having a life-long obsession with numbers on the calendar! The ClockUnder the Astor Hotel's clock was where Robert Walker and Judy Garland agreed to meet in the 1945 movie "The Clock." How deep?Nobody else has commented on this yet, but was it built 10-windows deep and later expanded by six more windows? Some of the pictures on the NY Architecture page seem to confirm that it started life more shallow. [You might be looking at a picture of the Knickerbocker Hotel, which seems to be on that page by mistake. But yes, the Hotel Astor was enlarged by six windows at the back in 1908-1909. - Dave] Bigger AstorIt is easy to see the approximately 60% addition to the hotel looking down 45th street. Looks like 6 rows of windows newer looking than the rest of the hotel. Golden RenaultThat 35-45 HP Renault Chassis would be $187,532.95 today's money. I want a room on the top floor with the railingor a room with a flagpole sticking out the window MTV TRL at 1APThe Astor was replaced by a skyscraper initially known as the W.T. Grant Building, now known as 1 Astor Plaza. Viacom is a primary tenant, and one of the Viacom cable channels (MTV) has broadcast from one of the lower-level studios. Total Request Live (or TRL), which introduced the world to Carson Daly, was one of those shows. That ain't working, that's the way they do it. Rare style nowadaysThere are not that many Beaux-Arts buildings left. The Willard Hotel in D.C. is one of them and narrowly escaped the wrecking ball in the '80s. One of these days I am going to stay in a room that has one of those beautiful huge round windows! (The Gallery, DPC, NYC)
Shipshape: 1917
... which I believe is, ironically, on the second floor. Night Ship Those ground lights around the USS Recruit must have made for a ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/11/2011 - 11:46am -

New York, 1917. "Washday on landship Recruit." Sailors doing their laundry on the Navy's pretend battleship moored at Union Square, used for recruiting during World War I. In back is the Automatic Vaudeville penny arcade, two of whose backers -- Marcus Loew and Adolph Zukor -- went on to found Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Paramount Pictures after a few years in the nickelodeon business. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size. Union Square AgainThis is Union Square Park facing south toward 14th Street (also known as Union Square South), a major crosstown (east-west) thoroughfare. The Automatic Vaudeville Theatre, if that was the name of it, was once the site of the Hearn's Department Store. The present tenant at that approximate location is a very busy Whole Foods Market at No. 4 Union Square South. No. 40 houses a Filene's Basement store -- which I believe is, ironically, on the second floor. Night ShipThose ground lights around the USS Recruit must have made for a pretty spectacular sight in the evenings. At that angle, the ground would disappear in shadows, leaving the ship to appear to float on waves of light. Very impressive design. (The Gallery, Boats & Bridges, G.G. Bain, NYC, WWI)
Noel, Iola: 1944
... veil, Iona Swinnerton, 40 years old, was married last night to Theron Victor Warren, 42, a shipyard worker and organist in the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/24/2023 - 11:31am -

On this Christmas Eve, we travel back 79 years for a visit with the First Lady of Shorpy, Iola Swinnerton. Some two decades after her bathing-pageant days, she is still radiating beauty and cheer. Scroll down to the comments for more of Iola's life story. View full size. "STONE WOMAN" ENJOYS CHRISTMAS PREPAREDNESS         CHICAGO (Dec. 23, 1944) -- Mrs. Iola Swinnerton Warren, who suffered the illness known as myositis ossificans after inoculation for typhoid following a Florida hurricane, watches her husband Theron V. Warren and little nephew Herbert Taylor trim Christmas tree. (Acme Newspictures photo.) Licensed to Marry.From the Washington Post of August 4, 1918: "Gerald Swinnerton, 31, of Williamston, Michigan, and Iola Taylor, 18, of Rockford, Illinois." Iola in 1947Here is part of article from the Waterloo Sunday Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) of March 9, 1947. The Warrens adopted Herbert Taylor (Iola's nephew). Herbert was 13 in 1947. Forever YoungIt would seem, from an earlier comment, that she was born in 1902, so she would have been 19 or 20 in those earlier photos from 1921 and 1922, and 42 here. She has lovely, youthful skin and a radiant smile. [If she was 18 when married in 1918, she'd have been born in 1899 or 1900. - Dave] Not just Christmas celebrationsThis is also the occasion of their second wedding anniversary - I found the announcement from the Suburbanite Economist (Chicago) of December 23, 1942. It sounds like she had a terrible time with this illness -- it started in 1926 and she spent nine years in the hospital! I'm glad she seems to have found happiness with Theron. Based on what I read about myositis ossificans, it seems unlikely that this is what she had. It is normally caused by an injury to a muscle, and from what I can tell, stays within that muscle -- it doesn't spread to other areas of the body. It's probably more likely that she had heterotopic ossification, possibly caused by central nervous system injury or an underlying genetic disorder. *Cringe*I am sure that Herbie really enjoyed being characterized in the newspaper as her "little" nephew. Hope his friends didn't see the story! [He looks like Larry Mondello. - Dave] Carpentry and TweedNotice the nicely done rest for her feet that does not appear to be part of the original wheelchair--not the easiest thing to put together if you're doing it with nails instead of wood screws, which may be the case here. Also, I love the nephew's tweed slacks--sadly, winter weight slacks seem to be a thing of the past, even up north here in Minnesota. They're keeping him so warm, he doesn't need to keep his shirt tucked in. The story that keeps on givingAnother amazing feature of this website. Over the course of eleven and a half years (dating back to April of 2007) we are treated to a series of photos of Iola Swinnerton from a very specific two-year period (1921-1922) in a very specific context (bathing suit beauty contest). No sense of limitation or lack of variety, and every new photo was a delight. Flash forward suddenly 22 years to 1944 and to a whole new context. We find Iola in a wheelchair with a strange and rare disease, and yet she is happy, recently married to a benevolent-looking church organist, and she and her husband have adopted her nephew. The husband "wasn’t discouraged because the pretty invalid was confined to a wheelchair," and she is able to report that her "condition has steadily improved" since they got married. The crowning glory of her positivity: "My dreams during so many years in hospitals have come true." (She writes songs which are published!) "I only hope someone else can take hope from my happiness." This is one of the most truly marvelous stories I've ever come across. Stiff Man’s SyndromeIola may have had what is now called Stiff Person’s Syndrome. It was first diagnosed in 1956. A friend had it. IolatryHere's a few more details regarding Iola. The New York Times, while reporting her wedding, stated that she was earning her living as a seamstress. The paper also said, "She was stricken by the baffling disease after the Florida Hurricane of 1926. At that time she lived in a Miami Beach cottage, the wife of Gerald Swinnerton, whom she divorced in April, charging desertion." In the 1940 U.S. Census Gerald Swinnerton is claiming to have been widowed. He was a camera designer and repairman, as well as a World War I veteran, and he was also known as George Simons. He died in 1961. Regarding her wedding, the Chicago Tribune of December 24, 1942 published the following story. "Smiling from her wheelchair, in a moire taffeta wedding dress and a shoulder length tulle veil, Iona Swinnerton, 40 years old, was married last night to Theron Victor Warren, 42, a shipyard worker and organist in the Wentworth Baptist church. The bride is suffering from a rare disease characterized by hardening of the muscles. "About 100 relatives and friends were present as the Rev. Eugene H. Daniels read the marriage ceremony. L. Duke Taylor, 1918 Cleveland avenue, her brother, gave the bride away. Donald McGowan, 1954 Henderson street, was the best man. "Miss Swinnerton, who lives at 4044 Wentworth avenue, has been suffering from the malady since 1926. She teaches a Bible class at the church, and met Warren while attending the services there." An article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette in December 1945 indicated that she had spent six years at the Cook County Hospital for treatment of her condition. She was refinishing furniture and canning fruit in addition to writing songs. "Theron proposed not very long after I cooked him a duck dinner," she confided. In 1949 Iola won fourth place in a nationwide Army songwriting contest, which earned her a $50 savings bond. The title of the tune was "Three Cheers For the Army." She died five years later, in 1954. Her obituary from the Chicago Tribune is below. "Iola N. Warren, 2642 Barry avenue, June 13, 1954, beloved wife of Theron V. Warren, dear sister of Louis Duke Taylor, dear aunt to Herbert Taylor. At chapel, 316 W. 63d street, at Harvard avenue, where services will be held Thursday, June 17, at 1 p.m. Cremation Oak Woods." Theron Warren died on May 3, 1976. The image below is from the January 4, 1937 issue of the Wilson (N.C.) Daily Times. FOPI presume Iola had fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Story of Two FamiliesLuckily, I accepted an invitation to the Swinnertons' Christmas party before the invitation to the Dickeys' Christmas party arrived. Three cheers for King CottonThe pants of the kid look as if they are scratchy. Ask me how I know. It’s a small worldI’ve been a long-time Shorpy lurker, and have many of the wonderful images saved as desktop wallpaper. I had to comment on this picture -- the Eugene H. Daniels mentioned as the officiant in the newspaper article was my great-grandfather! By the time I knew him, he was just “Grandpa Dan”; it’s neat to be able to read about Iola and Theron some 78 years later. Merry Christmas to all! Eeugh!Theron is a ringer for an ex of mine. I hope Iola had better luck--she certainly endured enough as it was. (The Gallery, Chicago, Christmas, Iola S., Kids, News Photo Archive)
Cola War: 1956
... gun that has those same characteristics. Hot Georgia night These folks are sweating like crazy. I live about 60 miles north of Columbus and nearly every night this summer it's been as hot as fire. 88 degrees at 10 pm. I know how ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/19/2015 - 7:53pm -

Columbus, Georgia, circa 1956. "Boys Club picnic." RC Cola outlier on the left, and he's armed. 4x5 acetate negative from the News Archive. View full size. GuiltI don't know what awful thing happened in Columbus, Georgia, on the day this photo was taken, but I know that the kid in the checkered shirt did it. There's an important part missingThe Moon Pie on the good Colonel's plate! Dynamic Range Envy Anyone who thinks digital has surpassed film in every way should try to replicate this shot. The foreground blasted with a bare bulb flash, no loss of detail in the man's bright white shirt and we can still see the cars parked in the dark parking lot behind them. Also, the kid in the black t-shirt has got to be the neighborhood bully, right? He's straight out of Central Casting. I'm guessing that Eugene sitting next to him has got some "purple nurple" and "indian rug burn" bruising from earlier in the day. The Trooper's "sidearm"looks like a Hopalong Cassidy cap gun to me 9 Out of 10 State TroopersPrefer RC Cola to Coke. But where are the empty peanut packages? An RC without peanuts is like a day without sunshine. SporkThe woman is using a spork. The guy with three slices of bread is a mystery. What is he going to do with them? A double-decker potato salad sandwich perhaps. LocovoreRC Cola was, of course, first compounded in Columbus, Georgia, so the cop impersonating a colonel is but displaying his good 'ol boy bona fides by enjoying this local product. I wonder where in the police academy curriculum they cover "good things to do with your sidearm while picnicking?" Take your pickHim or this lady Toy pistol?The small size, spurred trigger guard, and longhorn on the grips make me think that might be a toy sixgun under the state policeman's leg. Here's a 1950s Texan Junior cap gun that has those same characteristics. Hot Georgia nightThese folks are sweating like crazy. I live about 60 miles north of Columbus and nearly every night this summer it's been as hot as fire. 88 degrees at 10 pm. I know how they feel. Muggy like somebody squirting you with hot saltwater. Sweat dripping off the State Patrolman's face and coming thru his shirt. I reckon they either don't have air conditioning or are going to enjoy Gramp's birthday whether it kills them or not. HomesliceSlices of sandwich bread are a staple served with BBQ in Columbus. Bite of BBQ, bite of bread. Repeat. Snack center of the universeNot only was RC Cola invented in Columbus, and the company is still based there, but the original formula for Coke also was invented there by John S. Pemberton, a local pharmacist. Used to walk by the site of his pharmacy on the way to lunch every day when I worked for the newspaper there in the early '70s. Columbus is also the home of Tom's Peanuts, so between RC and Tom's, every textile mill worker had a ready snack for break. Also, in Columbus and in east Alabama, barbecue is always served with several pieces of good old white bread, so, that's not any kind of sandwich, just stacked slices waiting to be consumed. Gov. of GeorgiaIf I'm not mistaken (and the presence of a state trooper may bear me out), that's future Georgia Governor (1959-1963) Ernest Vandiver looking at the camera. Yep. I believe that's him. [I believe you're correct. -tterrace] [In 1956, he was Lieutenant Governor. - Dave] Chip off the old blockThat sure looks like Gov. Vandiver, which probably makes the boy to his right his son (amazing resemblance), Samuel Ernest "Chip" Vandiver III. Good catchI never ceased to be amazed at the range of knowledge displayed by the Shorpy crew. The State Patrolman's SidearmI bet he's holding it for one of the local youths at the table, the one in the black shirt maybe? Could he be the Governor's protection officer? The Patrolman and the Legionnaire sure look related. Father and son? If so, the apple didn't fall very far from the tree. The Governor's shoes certainly draw attention. Amazing how a whole story can come out of one snapshot. Linus' lawI teach Linux in IT classes at college. Shorpy is a practical example of the the thing that makes Linux special. It was coined by Eric S. Raymond as Linus' Law. It states: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" Simply if enough people work on a problem, somebody, will say "oh that's not a problem! I know how to fix that!" Shorpy shows With enough people looking at an image, somebody is going to go "Oh I know who/where/what that is!" (The Gallery, Columbus, Ga., News Photo Archive)
Vise Grip: 1942
... by "Lieutenant Whitman." View full size. Late Night The wrestler on top looks like Midshipman Conan. The Wrestling ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/25/2014 - 8:29pm -

July 1942. "Wrestling at U.S. Naval Academy." Our second look at the manly midshipmen of Annapolis as snapped by "Lieutenant Whitman." View full size. Late NightThe wrestler on top looks like Midshipman Conan. The Wrestling BrothersDespite being conjoined perpendicularly across the spine, Robert and Harold Wrestling surmounted the odds and were awarded appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. (The Gallery, Lt. Whitman, Sports)
Lots of Slots: 1944
... and Now What a difference a day or two makes No night visitors All the windows are wired with burglar alarm tape. I didn't ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/25/2016 - 8:21pm -

"Slot machine stockroom, Maser Music Co., Mission and Washburn sts., San Francisco, 1944." 8x10 inch Eastman acetate negative, photographer unknown. Late of the Wyland Stanley and Marilyn Blaisdell collections. View full size. Then and NowWhat a difference a day or two makes No night visitorsAll the windows are wired with burglar alarm tape. I didn't know they had that back in 1944. (The Gallery, San Francisco, W. Stanley)
Kwik-E Mart: 1918
... to be in total disrepair other than the storefront.) Night Soil The bucket on the curb could be the Night Soil container, a polite term for human waste which the sanitation ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/04/2012 - 12:59pm -

Next in National Photo's "old house" series from circa 1918: "Old house, 1st & N Street N.E." National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size. Is That You, Apu?Dave, can we get a blowup of the bay window. I think I can see Apu Nahasapeemapetilon inside. Thank you, come again! Ghost StairsInteresting outline of stairs on building to right leading to what is now a door to nowhere except a long first step. You have to wonder if they simply disintegrated or were no longer needed. Life was Simpler Before ZoningThe chalkboard sez: "Wood & Coal Sugar 6c lb. Pork Chops 10 Beef Steak 10 Spare Ribs [illegible] Cut Ham 7c" What, no Grey Poupon? GallaudetThis is now a part of Gallaudet University. The residences between N & M St were razed recently. Closeups Click above to enlarge. What interests me is the "street furniture." The horse fountain on the curb, and whatever that buckety thing is. Garbage pail? The BucketMy wife and I have spent years around horses so naturally thought your "bucket" had something to do with them. We came up with two possibilities: - A low-slung hitching post. I like the idea of a knob on top so you wouldn't have to thread your halter rope through a loop. If the horse steps over the rope, however, you've got a wreck. _ A manure can. This looks like a better bet. All that horse manure had to go somewhere. This would be a handy way to keep your street clean. [Looks a bit small for a manure can. Plus, the District sanitation department cleaned the streets of manure. - Dave] About that bucketCould it contain salt or sand for the road in case of snow? It does appear to be wintertime, if the trees are any indication. (Boy, this is a desolate scene. The building itself appears to be in total disrepair other than the storefront.) Night SoilThe bucket on the curb could be the Night Soil container, a polite term for human waste which the sanitation department collected for disposal, since indoor plumbing was not in widespread use at the time. DC government services pamphlets mentioned Night Soil Collection into the 1960's. Watering troughs for horses were also part of DC's street furniture into the 1960's. [It turned out to be a fire hydrant with a cover. Also seen here. - Dave] (The Gallery, D.C., Natl Photo, Stores & Markets)
Old Wool Stores
... studio apartments. View full size. Still of the night Nice feel..great color...like a scene from a movie..something is going ... 
 
Posted by bazzil - 05/05/2012 - 1:01pm -

The derelict old wool store buildings in Newstead, Brisbane, Australia. A four minute exposure taken at around 3am one evening in 1984. Well before the area was modernised and turned into studio apartments. View full size. Still of the nightNice feel..great color...like a scene from a movie..something is going to happen Beautiful Colour and Aspect RatioIt almost looks like someone colorised it very carefully. (FYI: I tried to use AU spelling just for you.) AromasI will never forget the smell of the Geelong Wool Stores on a hot summer day back in the late 1950s when we lived there. Add to that the steam locos shunting onto the adjacent piers and what more could a 12 year old ask for. I would go down to the West Geelong rail yards with a friend, and from the pedestrian overpass we watched the action. When I got home my mother immediately knew where I'd been from the coal smoke smell in my clothes. We visited Brisbane when the trams and trolley buses were still running. Not to mention the old swing-door suburban carriages. (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery)
Apocalypse Then: 1906
... me of some 9/11 photos Just had a small one last night. Just sitting at the computer, when around 11:30 last night, a 3.8 jolt hit the house. Always nice to have a little reminder of just ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/21/2012 - 5:17pm -

"Looking up Market St. from near Ferry." Another look at San Francisco in the aftermath of the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906. View full size. Hot time tonightMSG: You were pretty close with your guesstimate of temperatures that would cause granite to crack and scale off. Most histories of the 1906 conflagration estimate fire temperatures reached 2,500-2,700 degrees F. FrighteningThat wall that's left on the right side looks like a strong wind could finish the job. Those that survived and were able to rebuild were very lucky. Grandma? Is that you?Can't get enough of the '06 quake shots. My grandparents and 6 week old uncle survived the great temblor. My G-grandmother's parakeet did not however. It was blasted away with her house when General Funston's soldiers dynamited vast swaths of the city (causing more destruction and fires). The picture is of my grandfather's crony, my grandmother, grandfather, great aunt, her son, and a rather dapper chap whose name is lost to history. They're sitting outside of my grandfather's cigar store with the cookstove removed from the building to prevent more fires. I love hearing all the hullabaloo from the East Coasters going on about the recent quake. I'll take the occasional rumble over a "hurricane season" anytime! Still in their Sunday bestTalk about a different time and stiff upper lip. Ladies still dressed to the nines and men in suits and bollers. April 18, 2011My family and I visited San Francisco on the 105th anniversary of the famous quake. Just to mark the occasion, a 3.8 magnitude earthquake occurred at 2:57 p.m. that day. We were at Coit Tower and quite oblivious to any shaking. We found out about it later when we were watching the late news. Tragedy and lossThe dust/smoke in this photo reminds me of some 9/11 photos Just had a small one last night. Just sitting at the computer, when around 11:30 last night, a 3.8 jolt hit the house. Always nice to have a little reminder of just where you stand with mother nature. Just north of S.F. No two ever feel the same. The BlitzExcept for the ancient attire and the parade of horse carts, this could be a photo of London, the morning after a WW2 air raid. Extreme heatFrom the appearance of the stone walls on the first floor the heat from the fire must have been truly extreme. The wooden floors would have pancaked one on top of the other to continue feeding the fire on the first floor. Temperatures must have been in excess of 2000 degrees. Scalded StoneThe brick portions of the building appear to have survived with much less damage than the stone. I'm no expert in this but given the way the stone has blistered and peeled I would think it more likely to be some sort of sedimentary rock such as sandstone. Is there any Shorpy geologist, mason, or firefighter who can weigh in and explain the damage to the stone? CoverupFWIW, I'd guess limestone blocks faced with some sort of plaster or stucco-like material, which flaked off in the heat. You can see where it remains on the lower right and left. Wagon wheel gaugeNot seen often but notice the wagons traveling along the rails. A great example of wagons and most carts along with the early automobiles showing they had the same wheel width as standard gauge railroads, 4'-8-1/2". Here many wagons are traveling along the rails as it was a smoother ride on cobble stone streets, and not seen so much on smooth streets. They are not directly on the rails but just off to one side. Early automobiles had the same wheel spacing as the wagons they replaced so that they could travel in the same ruts as created by wagon travel, certainly not for this example on city streets, but for the many ruts created across the country, many of which still exist. Apparently this wheel gauge originated with the Roman chariots and most forms of vehicles followed the rut spacing. Early railroads were developed using wooden rails spaced to fit horse drawn carts, naturally following previous wagon wheel spacing, 4'-8-1/2". Rumor has it that this spacing works out from the convenience of constructing Roman chariots to fit behind two horses. (The Gallery, DPC, Fires, Floods etc., San Francisco)
Chop Suey Canyon: 1916
... scenic lot at the top of a South American cataract. Night Lunch Wagon Just beyond the old house is a horse-drawn lunch wagon, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/24/2012 - 9:56pm -

Detroit, 1916. "Park Boulevard canyon." A tip of the Shorpy hat (Department of Belated Publicity) to Dr. Bertha J. Gaylord, chiropractor. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Dorothy transplantI wonder if the gal on the porch is thinking, "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Neatness Counts Dr. Bertha should get on someone's case about cleaning up the front lawn. Nothing but a parking lot these daysThe doctor's office is nothing but an ugly parking lot these days. As for the Charlevoix Hotel, it's still there, but it's been empty since the mid '80s. The Charlevoix was intended to be an office building. Instead, it was a hotel at first but only for about 10 years. It also spent a short time as an apartment building before being turned into a commercial building for various companies and unions in 1922. The hotel was never one of Detroit's glamorous spots, offering a cheaper alternative to the top hotels of Grand Circus Park: The Hotel Tuller and the Hotel Statler. View Larger Map Tuller HotelMy grandfather was a window washer in the late 1930s at the Tuller Hotel. The stories he told of acts he saw through the windows would knock you off your chair. These days, I spend a lot my free time at the Park Bar directly across from the old Charlevoix Hotel. Oh, my aching --Cool picture. I like the sign in the lower right. After picking up all that litter, one might need to visit Bertha for some relief. No place like home!I like the old frame house tucked away in the midst of the "canyon." Wonder how much longer they were able to hold out? BoomPlease tell me that's not the grandfather of the Pinto in the foreground. Failed DIY Auto Repair?Looks like a bent C-clamp and the remains of some part or repair material in the road, just to the left rear of the car parked near Dr. Bertha's sign. Potential havoc seems to be awaiting some unsuspecting Goodyear, and its driver might even bring some business to the good doctor. Re: Tuller TalesNow ... We're sitting tight on our chairs and listening ! What did your grandfather see ? Nowhere to go but Up!Later that year, lifted by 20,622 helium balloons, the small frame house was moved from its spot on Park Boulevard to a more scenic lot at the top of a South American cataract. Night Lunch WagonJust beyond the old house is a horse-drawn lunch wagon, the precursor to the American diner. A similar wagon is on display at the Henry Ford Museum. Elsewhere on Shorpy: The Ol' Lunch Wagon. Chop Suey DaysIt seems that for my parents' generation, and earlier, Chinese food meant chop suey. And during the past half century or so that dish has gone entirely out of style (deservedly, in my opinion) --people order everything else on the Chinese menu. Is my impression correct? Chop Suey Exposed!"Chop Suey" isn't really a Chinese dish at all, it's something that was created in America. And its makeup varies: here in New England, it's usually some kind of macaroni, tomato and cheese dish. Dr. Bertha J. GaylordThanks to Shorpy, now the chiropractor of choice for discerning time travelers everywhen and everywhere. K-Mart's early daysInteresting rear view of the Kales Building, the first headquarters for Kresge Company. Litterbugs!I am always amazed at the amount of garbage in the streets. You hear about the lack of respect in today's world but the trash in the streets says a lot about yesterday too! On the Street The line of cars on the left starts out with a 1914 - 1916 Buick followed by a 1914 - 1916 Studebaker. Note also the lack of parking meters and stop lights or stop signs. The street light over the road is very interesting in that it has a device to lower it down to either light it or change the bulb. The Doctor and the HotelAccording to the Detroit City Dirctory of 1915 Dr. Gaylord's address was 61 Park Blvd. which was also her home. By 1918 she had moved to 65 Traugott (Schmidt Bldg), Room 73. The Hotel Charlevoix is located in the Park Avenue Historic District and cannot be demolished without proper approval. As of June 2012 permission for demolishing the structure has been denied. More information and photos of this building are here. http://historicdetroit.org/building/hotel-charlevoix/ Update on January 6, 2018: Sadly the Hotel Charlevoix was demolished on June 23, 2013. Info at the link above. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Detroit Photos, DPC)
30 Rock: 1933
... President Kennedy had been shot. We stayed up all Friday night and most of Saturday assembling film footage for a retrospective of JFK's ... The exposure is so right-on and this in 1933!! Is this a "night" shot.. there is a lot of ambient light. Simply Amazing. I want it! ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:22pm -

New York. December 5, 1933. "Rockefeller Center and RCA Building from 515 Madison Avenue." Digital image recovered from released emulsion layer of the original 5x7 acetate negative. Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size. City of the godsIn 1933, my father was a seven-year-old living up Lick Branch Hollow in the Ozark Mountains. He would read books by kerosene light in the evenings. His family kept butter and milk (and Uncle Linus' hooch) in the cold spring-fed creek outside their house. It's astonishing to think he could have boarded a train and eventually arrived in this city of the gods, only a thousand miles away. Sign of the CrossThe double bar cross was the emblem used by the National Tuberculosis Association. Wonder if the lights were part of the campaign to fight TB. Gotta love those whitewalls!On the convertible by the front door. Double O's. Looks like it's ready to go somewhere in a hurry. Released emulsion layer?Dave, can you explain the technology of this image? How does an emulsion layer get released from a negative? [This is a process used on deteriorating acetate transparencies and negatives when they've begun to shrink. The negative is placed in a chemical solution that separates the emulsion from the film base. The released emulsion layer (the pellicle) is then placed in another solution to "relax," or unwarp, it. It's kind of like disappearing your body so that only the skin is left. More here. - Dave] Amazing viewThe shot is incredible! It looks almost surreal. I love it! Awesome scan job.I only wish I could see an even higher res version. Great work bringing this one back to life. WowI just can't believe how beautiful this shot is. Looks like the view from my New York Penthouse sitting there drinking martinis and listening to that new "jazz" music. High DramaThis marvelous building, reaching for the sky as if erupting from the ground, combines amazing delicacy, impressive size, and a feeling it is built for the ages to admire. SO much more breathtaking than today's typical glass box, although you need a view like this to really appreciate the classical lines and artful massing. A nice complement to the gothic cathedral in the foreground - a true temple of commerce! Churchly And Corporate SpiresThat's St. Patrick's Cathedral on the lower left, probably the only building from the 19th century left on Fifth Avenue, except for the Chancery House that's attached to it. Both styles of architecture are very dramatic. When I was a small child, at Christmas, my family would go to the Christmas Pageant at Radio City Music Hall every year, and then attend Midnight Mass at St. Patrick's. Ever since, I've never been able to separate religion from showbiz. Possibly because they really are the same thing. Take a peekThis picture makes me want to get out the binoculars and look in the windows. "Don't get much better"This image is a about as close to textbook perfect BW as you will find. It contains the complete range of grays from what looks like solid black in a few places to solid white in the highlights. The camera was level and the focus was dead on. As a photographer, I am envious. Old shooter Reaching New HeightsThe skyscraper is 30 Rockefeller Plaza before the RCA and current GE neon signage. Not that it wasn't famous before, but the TV show "30 Rock" has made it an even more iconic. Another claim is the gigantic Christmas tree on the Plaza, between the building and the skating rink, that when illuminated kicks off the Holiday Season in NYC. Hugh FerrissThis is like the photographic equivalent of one of Hugh Ferriss' architectural drawings, coincidentally of roughly the same era. MagicThe quality of this incredible photo captures the magic that New York City always longs for but seldom delivers. King Kong might have had a chance...had he chosen 30 Rock instead. OKLo mismo digo. Gracias. American Express BuildingThat hole in the ground, I believe, bacame the American Express Building. If you come out of the subway at the Rockefeller Center stop, and come up on the escalator in that building, you get an incredible view of St Pat's from below, with the spectacular statue of Atlas in the foreground as well. Very cool. Other noteworthy background details here include the Hotel Edison, and the old NY Times Building, at Times Square, before they went and utterly ruined it in the 60's by stripping all the detail off the skeleton. And check the skylights on the roof of what I think is the Cartier store, in the foreground! Send this to Christopher NolanHere's the art direction for the next Batman sequel. SpectacularWhat a wonderful, wonderful image! I love coming to Shorpy because you never know what Dave will come up with next. Thanks so much! The GreatestDave, this has to be one of the greatest photos you have posted. I work around the corner, and can look out my window at 30 Rock from 6th Avenue... my building wasn't built until 1973. Thank you. Time stoppedIs it 2:25am or 5:10am? Can you spot the clock? What Gets MeLooking at this photo - and it looks spectacular on my new monitor - is the sky. It has a sort of foggy twilight quality that is difficult to put into words but which emphasizes the the "star" of the photo - the RCA Building - and its nearby consorts or supporting cast over the buildings in the background which seem to fad into the mist. The building seems like the height of modernity, and one can easily imagine a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel and Shuster seeing this and making it a model for the cities of the doomed planet Krypton. Very neat picture...Can you give us an idea of what it looked like before it was restored? [There's an example here. - Dave] StunnedWhat a totally wonderful image, Sat here slack jawed at the incredible detail and the superb composition. I am amazedThe detail in the spires at St. Paul's Patrick's is fantastic. The amount of work that went into that building must have been enormous. I am very grateful not to have been on the crew detailed to put the crosses atop the spires! The Future Is NowInteresting that this photograph looks into a future in which many of the same buildings are still with us. At far left midground is the tower of Raymond Hood's American Standard Building. Next to it, with the illuminated sign on top, is the New Yorker Hotel (now Sun Myung Moon's) where Nikola Tesla spent the last ten years of his life. At center is the N.Y. Times Building with its flagpole convenient for deploying the New Year's Eve ball. And last, but not least, the Paramount Building topped by a globe and illuminated clock which is about as close to the Hudsucker Building as could hope to be seen. Of these four only the appearance Times Building has changed to any extent. A wonderful slice of time. TremendousTwo of my favorite photos on Shorpy consist of those like this one, showing the immense power of a huge city, even in the depths of the Depression, and those of small towns, especially when patriotic holidays were still celebrated. Samuel H. GottschoI'd never heard of him, but one look at this photo and I'm instantly a fan. This image is nothing short of spectacular. Ethereal, PowerfulThere have been many photos on this site that have impressed and pleased me, but this one is one of my favorites. Absolute magic. It's the quintessence of the power and style of 1930s design. Time machineI admire NY photos of the 1950s. And now I see that many of the buildings in NY I admire already were erected in early 1930s! What a discovery. What a shot. The Singularity of the MomentThis is an amazing photograph. As one earlier contributor observed, the pure technical aspects of the black and white composition are fabulous. The spread of detailed gray shadows and whites make this photo almost magical. It has the qualities of an Ansel Adams zone photograph that makes his work so arresting. But what really makes this photograph dramatic is what it reveals about New York City in 1933. A vision of the future of large cities, bustling twenty four hours a day and electrified. Today visions such as these can be seen on any continent in any large city. It has become the norm. But in 1933 there were only two places in the world that looked like this: New York City and Chicago. One can vicariously put oneself into the shoes of some kid from rural America or from Europe setting on Manhattan Island and seeing visions such as these for the first time. I can only guess it had the same effect as it had on 14th-century peasants in France, visiting Paris for the first time and entering the nave of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Beautifully put!I'm sure Samuel Gottscho would have been very gratified to know thoughtful and eloquent people like Bob H would be appreciating his work in the 21st century. PenthouseIs the Garden Patio still across the street from the skylights? I am in love with this photographExquisite doesn't even begin to describe it. In Your Mind's EyeYou can smell and feel the air and hear the traffic. It may be calm now...I have a feeling that all hell is about to break loose -- this picture was taken the day Prohibition was repealed. I worked hereI worked here in the 1960s for the "Tonight" show unit as as a production assistant for Dick Carson, brother of Johnny Carson. An attractive, dark-haired woman named Barbara Walters was working at the "Today" show at the same time. She is about 10 years older than I am. I also worked with the News department for a time. I was in the elevator with David Brinkley coming back from lunch when I learned that President Kennedy had been shot. We stayed up all Friday night and most of Saturday assembling film footage for a retrospective of JFK's life. When we weren't editing, we were visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral to light candles with others in the crowd. That's an absolutely amazing photo. I'm going to link this to other New Yorkers and broadcasters who might be interested. Thanks for all your work. Cordially, Ellen Kimball Portland, OR http://ellenkimball.blogspot.com 30 RockIs the excavated area where the skating rink is? I've been there once and it is very magical. Right across the street from the "Today" studio. Tipster's PhotoStunning, but in a different way than Gottscho's. It helps when the subject is beautiful. 30 Rock 09 Here's the view today made with a 4x5 view camera, farther back seen through the St. Patrick's spires and somewhat higher than the 1933 photo. Lots more buildings now. I was doing an interior architectural shoot, and went out on the terrace of a wedding-cake building on Madison Avenue. It was after midnight. Not much wind. Strangely quiet. As an architectural photographer I have great admiration for these Gottscho pictures. 30 Rock in Living ColorThat's a lovely photo, and it's nice to see the perspective so close to that of the original. Design Continuum of Bertram GoodhueThe proximity of St. Patrick's Cathedral to the newly constructed tower by Raymond Hood brought to mind two "bookends" to the unfulfilled career of Bertram Goodhue. During his early apprenticeship he undoubtedly worked on the St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Renwick's office, which greatly influenced his early career and success. The tower (30 Roc) represents what might have been...rather what should have been the end result of Goodhue's tragically shortened career (ending in 1924). Hood's career, which began to emerge after Goodhue's death is far better known, but is greatly in his debt. Hood's 1922 Tribune Tower clearly displays this link, as a practitioner of the neo-gothic style. Much of Hood's gothic detail is a through-back to design ideas that by 1922, Goodhue had already left behind. Goodhue was by this time already synthesizing elements of european modernism into an new original american idiom. Goodhue's last major projects were already working out the language of the modern/deco skyscraper; (the Nebraska State capital and Los Angles Public Library the best examples.) Goodhue's unique career was the crucible where concepts of romantic imagery of the Gothic, the sublime juxtapositions of minimal ornament on architectonic massing was being forged with modern construction technology. A close study of his career and work will show that not only Hood, but other notable architects of the era built upon the rigorous and expansive explorations that Goodhue was beginning to fuse at the end of his life. *It is also curious to me that Hugh Ferris is credited with so much of these innovative design ideas; no doubt he was a super talented delineator, his freelance services were utilized by many architects of the time including Goodhue. Some of his famous massing studies (sketches) owe much to Goodhue's late work. Amazing Execution and RestorationI agree with "Don't get much Better" ! This is as good as it can get for B&W. The exposure is so right-on and this in 1933!! Is this a "night" shot.. there is a lot of ambient light. Simply Amazing. I want it! Rock RinkThe not-yet-built skating rink is in front of the building. The empty space became 630 Fifth Avenue, where a statue of Atlas stands. Vanderbilt Triple PalaceA long time since this was posted, but I am surprised no one recognized the southern half of the iconic, brownstone-clad Vanderbilt Triple Palaces in the foreground (640 Fifth Avenue), just opposite the lower edge of the excavated building site. The northern half, with two residences, had been sold, demolished & replaced a long time ago, but the southern half stood until 1947 (Grace Wilson Vanderbilt continued entertaining in her usual style until WWII). The entrance vestibule to the three residences featured a nine foot tall Russian malachite vase, once given by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia to Nicholas Demidoff, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of dozen blocks north on Fifth. (The Gallery, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
The Upper Hand: 1941
... there were still coal fired furnaces! Girls' Night In Playing cards by correspondence perhaps? Staffordshire Pup ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/27/2017 - 8:47pm -

Detroit. "Summer 1941. Girls playing cards and drinking Coca-Cola." Our second look at a series of photos taken by Arthur Siegel for the Office of War Information. What game, exactly, are these girls up to? View full size. Coke, Eh?These ladies look just a little TOO happy. I wonder if they either got a batch of Coke with the original ingredients, or maybe a little rum found its way into their bottles? The envelope, pleaseThe rate for the time was 6c per oz. for airmail service plus 10c for Special Delivery service. That would be so even if this was APO/FPO mail. The stamps are 1c and 2c values from the National Defense issue. If you were wondering, the stamps, even unused, are still common as dirt and even the whole envelope likely isn't worth anything. Barracks againI entered the US Air Force in May of 1963 and did basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX. Our barracks was similar to the one pictured. Two floors, all wood and WWII vintage. They told us that we would get court martialed if caught smoking inside, as they would burn to the ground within minutes. He's in the Army NowThe snapshot lying on the chair in the foreground shows a GI standing outside an ubiquitous World War II barracks. Given the time period, he was likely a sweetheart serving in the Army. Although we weren't yet in the war, the draft had been instituted and tens of thousands of young men were undergoing training and living in identical "Mobilization Barracks" across the country. Two hands each.Each player is playing two hands. I think the envalopes are just to keep the hands separate. VarietyAt least one of the ladies prefers Pall Malls to Camels. A literary bunch, too, given the Columbia University Encyclopedia (a must in those pre-Wikipedia days). One peculiarity is the massive number of stamps on the envelope located toward the left side of the table. Correspondence from someone overseas, in these last few months of peacetime? [Air Mail Special Delivery with US stamps, although it could be from an APO or FPO. -tterrace] Ongoing barracks ubiquityThose barracks were still doing good and faithful service well into the 1960's, and perhaps beyond. I was housed in such barracks for Army Basic Training and Basic Radio School at Fort Dix, NJ and for Army Radioteletype Training at Fort Gordon, GA in parts of 1964 and 1965. At Fort Gordon there were still coal fired furnaces! Girls' Night InPlaying cards by correspondence perhaps? Staffordshire PupI've been scratching my head over the purpose of those envelopes. Could they be playing some card game via mail with soldiers overseas? That would be one explanation for why Arthur Siegel was there to photograph it. On the other hand, it's hard to think of any card games which would be entertaining to play via the mail. Porcelain dogs wearing heavy eyeliner were popular figurines manufactured in the Staffordshire region of England during the 19th and 20th century. By the time of this photo in the 1940s, knockoffs and fakes were abundant. Zenith 6s511The radio case is Bakelite - and I recognize the knobs as Zenith. I have several Zeniths with that type of knob (which are extremely prone to breakage). It's a Zenith 6s511, broadcast and shortwave, from 1941 - so it is probably brand new. The rubber wiring is still soft, instead of rock hard and crumbled up in the bottom!) Poker?Five hands dealt but only three girls. RadioLooks like some sort of Catalin radio over to the left. Six soulsGregTT is right, each woman is playing two hands. I see three couples who probably had a weekly card party together before the Protective Mobilization carried off the male contingent. Each woman would be playing for her absent partner. The fellow in the picture at the barracks is sitting in the chair with his back to us—he must be with the woman standing to his left. Across from him is the married lady whose husband is seated next to her on the sofa. The partner of the woman in the velvet dress is sitting in the chair to her right. Gone to serve—home in spirit. EuchreMy guess is they're playing Euchre, a popular card game in Michigan. There are 5 cards in a hand, and in the previous photo, the cards were being dealt in alternating 2's and 3's, as is common in Euchre. Finally, there's a 2-handed variant where each player gets dealt two hands; if you don't like the hand you have, you can switch to the other. It looks like they're doing the same for 3-handed. Hand Delivery EnvelopesI think each hand of cards was dealt onto an envelope marked with the player's name on it. The envelope under the pack of Camels seems to end with "hand", probably preceded by the soldier's name. The envelope with all the stamps on it was probably used for that soldier's hand of cards (that being the envelope that the unfolded letter on the left couch cushion probably came in. His letter got that couch seat. Another soldier had his picture occupying the foreground chair. I would bet there was something on the couch cushion beyond the top right corner of the table for the third soldier). It looks like his significant other is working with his hand at the moment of the photo. Message: Not here but not forgotten. You Can Light Either EndThere is a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes sitting on a book in front of the porcelain dog. That unfiltered brand was the first of the soon to be more popular "king size" smokes and was used mainly by women. Pall Mall is a street in London. They were referred to as "Paul Maul" never as the English did, "Pell Mell". WWII BarracksI was in the Army National Guard for most of the 1980's and I can tell you that those "temporary" barracks were still in regular use then. I can remember seeing them (and sleeping in them) at Fort Knox, Fort Campbell and maybe a couple of other places. At least some of them were built without any insulation, a real treat in cold weather, as you might imagine. (The Gallery, Arthur Siegel, Pretty Girls, The Card Game)
Easter Greetings: 1922
... proprietor, G. David Pearlman, was Jewish. - Dave] Night Lights There's probably a sign on the alley side of the building. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 5:15pm -

Washington, D.C., circa 1922. "933 G Street N.W." Happy Easter from Pearlman's and Shorpy. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size. Circulating LibraryDoes this sort of thing still exist? My dad used to rent Perry Masons and Ellery Queens by the week from one. In those days our public library considered such works beneath them. Now, of course, nothing is too low for the public library. Middle TThe center-door Model T Ford, made from 1915 to 1923, is considered the least likely to be seen today. Still a Library!Pearlman's circulating library gave way to a somewhat larger version of the same thing--the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The church on the left is the First Congregational Church; the building was replaced in the 1950s, and that building was razed for redevelopment in 2008--now a hole in the ground. The Middle WayThose center door cars must have been a pain in the neck, unless you wanted to get in the back seat. Literary LionsI remember the private circulating libraries. They were usually in drug stores. They had mainly new romantic novels that were aimed the women who were probably their best customers. I had an aunt who used to rent them, at 5¢ a day (if I remember correctly). She would read 3 a week. Mi-T-Fine MasonryThis photo has so much going for it. The masonry on the buildings is a visual treat, the lovely window dressings in the dress shop, and the snappy little car at the curb. I'm quite sure the dentist's office looked similar to the one previously posted here. Pearlman's looks like a place to lose yourself for a while browsing used books. Happy Easter! Bunny hopWho knew the Easter Bunny rode in a "Center Door" sedan? Can't read something in the windowImmediately below "Pearlman's Book Store" is: NO BRA-- S--RES No brain shares? [All I will say is, NO BRANCH STORES. - Dave] To All CareHave a blessed Easter today and every day. The imprimaturof Pearlman. Courtesy of Donald Francis. Ahhhh!Ahhhh! A photograph from an age in which folks did not try to feel offended by the celebration of Christian holidays and their attendant paraphernalia. Happy Easter! [And Shalom. The proprietor, G. David Pearlman, was Jewish. - Dave] Night LightsThere's probably a sign on the alley side of the building. Hence the lamps. And then the tenants in the upstairs apartments complained, and those shields went up. Stories above StoriesAny clue to what was on the third and fourth floors? A Lodge Hall; a small theater; a handball court? Those nice-looking windows wouldn't admit much light. [The upper floors were apartments. - Dave] Thoughts and questionsFirst of all, the car with the center door reminds me of a stagecoach. Is it any wonder that it is the least likely to be seen today? Second, why would it be necessary to advertise that this business had no branch stores? The sign is prominently and permanently painted on the front window so it must have been important. Finally, my most burning question. What was the reason for private circulating libraries? To offer things that public libraries didn't? Private lending librariesYou have to think of the history of public libraries in North America to understand why there were private lending libraries. Until Andrew Carnegie began to fund the building of public libraries across North America, the only access to books for most people was either purchasing them (mail order most often) or borrowing them from a private lending library. Like a public library, you paid a fee to join and often a fee per book to borrow the books. The 252-year-old Athenaeum, in Rhode Island, is one of the nation's oldest private lending libraries. Even after public libraries came about, largely thanks to grants from the Carnegie funding of libraries, many people who could afford to borrowed from private libraries because their selection would often include more "popular literature" which many public libraries might not. As well, there was a definite class perception about public libraries. Because the poor who couldn't afford to join a private library were free to borrow from public libraries, there was the idea that books from the public library were unsanitary, an idea which private libraries often put about. Many private libraries also catered to specific ethnic groups. Yiddish libraries, for instance. There are still private lending libraries, though they are fewer and farther between than they once were. One if by land?Two if by alley? What do you suppose the pair of globe lamps were used for at the second and third stories at the left of the building? There are reflecting boards behind them so I would not expect them to be for illuminating the alley. They seem to be arranged for good visibility some distance away from the storefront. Any ideas? "No branch stores"This was a very common phrase in retail advertising in the early part of the century, when chain stores were proliferating. It meant this is the only one, so you better come in. Two Pearlman'sThere is another very probable explanation for the "No Branch Stores" signage. There were two Pearlman Book Stores in Washington at the time. Paul Pearlman (my grandfather) broke away from the family business and started his own store, in 1921 (we think). It became a Washington institution. The store in the photo is the original business operated by his father and brother. [Below, from 1924, the first Washington Post ad for Paul Pearlman's bookstore. - Dave] (The Gallery, D.C., Easter, Natl Photo)
The Busy Corner: 1934
... the "Busy Corner" sign was revealed, still intact. The night it burned I was working at DC Fire Department the night it burned. It started in the rear on the 8th. street side to the left ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/03/2014 - 9:45am -

Washington, D.C., circa 1934. "Kann's Department Store." Pennsylvania Avenue at Eighth Street. National Photo Co. Collection glass negative. View full size. A Mammoth Establishment Washington Post, Oct 25, 1911 Kann Store 18 Years Old. From Modest Beginning, Firm Has Grown to Mammoth Establishment. Eighteen years ago this month a small store was opened on Pennsylvania avenue, near Eighth street, by the firm of S. Kann, Sons & Co. Today that store is housed in a large building that covers nearly the whole of the square between Pennsylvania avenue and D street, and Seventh and Eighth streets northwest. This week the firm celebrates its eighteenth birthday. ... S. Kann, Sons & Co has faithfully adhered to its maxim, early adopted," Always the Best of Everything for the Least Money." as is illustrated by the present "Birthday Sale." Its conscientious dealing with the public, and great care to satisfy the patrons have caused the growth of the enterprise until the three-story building of the beginning has been swallowed up in its mammoth one of today. Everyone of the 49 departments of the store, it is said, has striven to outdo all former records in value-giving for this sale, and the well-equipped delivery department with its ten automobiles and fifteen large wagons will no doubt feel the endeavor has been crowned with success. Kann's monkeys!I remember Kann's. There was also one in Arlington (where the GMU Law School is located now). I was fascinated as a kid with the glassed-in display with REAL MONKEYS. MagicThis is one of those magical images that make me feel (and wish!) I could just step into the photo, and stroll that sidewalk. I can almost hear the street sounds. I remember Kann's in the 1970sThe neighborhood had gone to seed and they slapped some hideous aluminum facade on the building to make it look contemporary. Then it burned down in a suspicious fire. Shame they couldn't save it like they did the Hotel Washington. A couple of brand-new FordsTwo brand-new 1933 or 34 Ford sedans (or a sedan and a Victoria) parked in the row to the right. A sad endI remember the end of Kahn's. In the 1960's the entire block of buildings had been encased in a modern slipcover blotting out the original facades. In the late 1970's the long empty building caught fire, probably arson. As the building was razed and the blackened and melted facade was removed the "Busy Corner" sign was revealed, still intact. The night it burnedI was working at DC Fire Department the night it burned. It started in the rear on the 8th. street side to the left of the picture. When we went in there was heavy smoke in the rear on the third floor. We tried pulling the hanging ceiling and found another ceiling of plaster and lathes, we pulled that ceiling and found another of ornamental tin, the fire was in the ceilings and there were three ceilings as the building had one placed over the other each time it was renovated. It was impossible to pull the 3 ceilings fast enough to keep ahead of the fire , and we merely chased it down the 8th. st,as it gained momentum to the Market Space side , then to the 7th. st side where it finally was put out with massive amounts of water. The building was actually many buildings all hooked together over the years. Much of the building could have been saved it was not destroyed, but I suppose it was monetarily unfeasible since it was closed anyway. I have heard the facade was saved, but I have no idea what they did with it. My mother's favorite place to shop, we always waited for her to finish her shopping at 4 o'clock and meet her on the Market Space entrance.I always enjoyed going to Kann's at Christmas for their toy train layout, and seeing their mechanical people in the Busy Corner , corner. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, D.C., Natl Photo, Stores & Markets)
Hotel Astor: 1909
... the One Astor Plaza office tower.] Not so garish at night The garishness of the fake foliage garland was probably not so ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/09/2012 - 3:18pm -

New York, 1909. "Hotel Astor, Times Square." Points of interest include the galleon lodged in the hotel facade, as well as a sign on the building next door advertising the fifth Vanderbilt Cup auto race. View full size. Richest man on the TitanicI believe this primo piece of real estate was owned by the family of John Jacob Astor IV who perished in the sinking of that ship just three years after this picture was taken. On the WagonLots fascinating here from the cops who just seem to stand in the middle of the street to the oil stains on it, and the people going about their daily rush, but what keeps drawing me in is the sturdy horse wagon with the big S on its side. It is so big and rustic compared to the cars behind it. Its wheels are thicker and stronger looking too. And it seems to be filled with people. But it does not look like it was intended as a coach. [Those are horse stains. - Dave] Hudson-Fulton Celebration BanquetThe Hotel Astor is all dressed up for the official banquet of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, held on September 29, 1909, which inaugurated the hotel's vast new banquet hall, the biggest in the city. More than 2,000 attended the banquet, including the official representatives of thirty-five countries. The guests all received copies of this sterling silver commemorative medal. Astor roofLooks like the Washington Square arch landed on the Astor's roof. About fifty years after this photo was taken, I drank many a 15¢ glass of draught beer in the Astor Bar (on the near corner). 'S' WagonThat's not just any S on that wagon, but the famous Singer Sewing Machine S logo (you can sort-of make out the words on it). Though as to why it's on the wagon, I cannot tell you. [Not the Singer logo. Note the absence of serifs, graphic and the different text. The S belongs to the Sicilian Asphalt Paving Co.] Mother Always Said"She's as dressed up as Mrs Astor's Horse" - I suppose a better statement would be "She's as dressed up as Mr Astor's Hotel" Sailing vessel through wall?I am curious to know the story behind the mock sailing vessel above the main entrance. [Undoubtedly a decoration for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration banquet.] Hotel AstorIs this fine hotel still standing? [Demolished 1968. Now the site of the One Astor Plaza office tower.] Not so garish at nightThe garishness of the fake foliage garland was probably not so noticeable in the evening when the thousands of lightbulbs hidden within turned on. A Wikipedia page for the Hudson-Fulton event says that Mr. Edison's incandescent bulbs were deployed by the hundred thousands to light up NYC for the celebration. My question is, what would the proper term be for the uppermost windows - the circular porthole windows on the mansard roof. Is there a more appropriate term than clerestory? [Dormer windows.] Star lightWith the statehood of Oklahoma in 1907, the US flag grew to 46 stars in July, 1908 yet here in 1909, the Astor still seems to be flying the 45-star flag. Roof Top GardenI wonder if there was a roof top garden serving as a restaurant with the arch serving as a decoration of some sort? (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, DPC, NYC, Streetcars)
Nightspot: 1941
... Change Keys To Play These Blues  1928 Tomorrow Night  1948 Flood Water Blues  1937 Mean Old Bedbug ...  1930 Guitar Blues  1929 Tomorrow Night  1947 Got The Blues For The West End  1937 ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/13/2011 - 2:02pm -

April 1941. "Entertainers at South Side tavern. Chicago, Illinois." Safety negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. Martin Dreadnaught!What I wouldn't give to have the guitar being played by the man in the center! Built by the C.F. Martin Company of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, it's a D-18. Hank Williams, Elvis, and other too numerous to mention played something similar. LonnieCould the guitarist on the right possibly be Lonnie Johnson? He'd have been 42 at the time, and was I believe based in Chicago in the early Forties. Looks a lot like him anyway. No reason for the photographer to know that he was snapping someone who'd played with Armstrong and Ellington, and is now seen as one of the great pioneers of blues/jazz guitar. The woman in the mirroris beautiful. I wonder if she's a partygoer or an employee? Sure wish we had sound with these pictures! The CrowdStylishly well dressed and enjoying the show. Classy Good TimesI don't think you can find places like this anymore where class and dignity upgrade the enjoyment of the music, cocktails and fun. I like the lady in the fedora in the back booth looking directly at the camera like she knows more than most and the elegance displayed by all the good company present. Don't know why, but it brings to mind a little-known song sung by LaVern Baker (born in Chicago in 1929) called "Saved" which is a real hoot with words something like "I used to smoke, I used to drink, I used to do the hootchy coo, but now I'm saved..." and there is a big Salvation Army drum booming in the background. I'll have to look that up and have another listen. Anyway, thank you Shorpy for the provacative photo, just another one of which takes me back to younger days. Chicago, Chicago, a toddlin' town... GuitarsThe guitar on the left is a 28 series Martin - you can tell by the white binding. It does look like a Dreadnought size, which surprises me. Man on the right has a Martin 00-21, which Lonnie Johnson played. LonnieMick H could be right. The resemblance to Lonnie Johnson is striking. [More Lonnie here. - Dave] Cool EleganceAs requested below ... A sampling of Lonnie Johnson's music from 1927-1947. I imagine he played one of these during a set. Ladies in hats and men including the musicians in suits and ties you just can't get gigs like that anymore. She's My Mary 1939 Two Tone Stomp 1928 Nothing But Trouble Have To Change Keys To Play These Blues 1928 Tomorrow Night 1948 Flood Water Blues 1937 Mean Old Bedbug Blues 1927 Swing Out Rhythm 1937 Playing With The Strings 1928 Jelly Roll Baker No More Troubles Now 1930 Guitar Blues 1929 Tomorrow Night 1947 Got The Blues For The West End 1937 Pleasing You As Long As I Live 1948 Blues In My Soul 1947 (The Gallery, Chicago, Eateries & Bars, Music, Russell Lee)
Dude Girl: 1941
... August 1941. "Dude girl with two cowboys at a Saturday night dance in Birney, Montana." Medium format acetate negative by Marion Post ... AMATEUR NIGHT OUT - All dressed up These young fellows seem to be awkwardly ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/12/2019 - 6:51pm -

August 1941. "Dude girl with two cowboys at a Saturday night dance in Birney, Montana." Medium format acetate negative by Marion Post Wolcott. View full size. What a smile!I wonder what happened to that pretty girl with the pretty smile, and if she ended up married to a Cowboy. Like Cooke's CookieThe next year, young English journalist Alistair Cooke was driving through Montana on the cross-country journey that would eventually become the subject of his book "The American Home Front, 1941-1942." In describing his journey through this part of the state, he wrote, "in the first year of the American war, and at harvest time thereafter, across many different landscapes, the American woman became a peasant - a peasant I noticed elsewhere with a tan and a high hairdo, and often with scarlet nails, ready for an evening of jitterbugging with the resident soldiery." Dude looks like a ladyWow! To use the parlance of those days, what a tomato! However, if she were my daughter I sure wouldn´t like the way that fellow toking on the smoke is looking at her. Romance on the horizonBe careful. I think the guy on your right is the man your mother warned you about. Dude ranches were the rage as noted by the number of movies featuring singing cowboys and wives waiting to undo the knot. Birney seems an unlikely choice. Located 65 miles East of Crow Agency, Birney and the Quarter Circle U (according to Rand McNally directions), is reached by a series of unnamed and partially unpaved roads. Here is Birney in its heyday with additional photos (from the same photo shoot) and a good write-up of the problems that forced many of them out of business. http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/birney.html AMATEUR NIGHT OUT - All dressed upThese young fellows seem to be awkwardly concentrating on looking "manly," studiously handling their Lucky Strikes to impress the gal who has been more likely charmed by one of our favorite photographers. The fellow on the right has probably just had a fine haircut for the occasion with the other seeming to be sporting a hairpiece? Where is the SMOKING MANDITORY sign? [Next to the SPELLCHECK MANDATORY sign. - Dave] (The Gallery, M.P. Wolcott, Pretty Girls)
Saturday in Florence: 1942
... for September 1 and 2. The theater seated 400. The last night of business seems to have been June 9, 1951. 1945/ 46 Hudson The ... Whatever the case, I made some cornbread in it the other night, so it's still working fine, however old it is. A Super picture ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/01/2023 - 8:49pm -

June 1942. "Florence, Alabama, Saturday afternoon." Medium format acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Office of War Information. View full size. This pic is great!I love all the detail. It makes me wonder where everybody in the pic is today? Wonder where they were going? Love the contrast! Stop and GoTraffic lights sure have become more elaborate since then. You would have trouble getting such a clear shot at a big intersection like that these days without a bunch of poles and signals getting in your way. Majestic TheaterFrom Movie Theater Information: The Majestic opened Saturday, August 30, 1919, at 204 North Court Street next to the new First National Bank. It's not clear what was shown on opening day, but the primary advertisements announced a Paramount Artcraft Special -- a motion picture style show with living models called "That Well Dressed Look" for September 1 and 2. The theater seated 400. The last night of business seems to have been June 9, 1951. 1945/ 46 HudsonThe Hudson in the center of the photo is a 1945 or 1946. [Nope. It's a 1942 Hudson. - Dave] AwesomeWonderful scan . . .Bravo! Foy Isn't this great?Isn't this great? Women wore skirts, and you could drive a car called Hudson. 1942 HudsonIt seems to me that a 1942 Hudson would be a relatively rare beast. I realize that production and sales on the 1942s started in September 1941, but they'd still have a shortened production run once the government ordered a halt to new automotive production because of the war. [Total Hudson production for the 1942 model year was 40,661 cars. - Dave] Florence, AlabamaMy grandmother gave me a cast iron skillet (that had been her mother’s) that was made in Florence. Some of her family had moved from that area in the 1850s, and I’ve always wondered if that skillet is that old or not. Whatever the case, I made some cornbread in it the other night, so it's still working fine, however old it is. A Super pictureEven though WW II was raging, the picture show a gentle perhaps kinder time. People socializing, cars washed, traffic rules obeyed, clean streets, just great. Where did it all go? Bruce Saturday afternoon, Florence, AlabamaA much simpler time, what a fantastic picture. It could be a Norman Rockwell painting. Florence, Alabama This is my hometown and the hometown of my parents and grandparents. This picture had to have been taken from the old courthouse, which is long gone, but the buildings in the picture still exist! I wishI wish it looked that good today! I live less than a mile from where this was taken. I would love to see that many people walking and socializing on the sidewalks again. Looking for somethingI'm looking for an old pic of THIS area right here, only its older (I'd say late 1800's) it's b/w and shows horse troughs on the ground below where traffic lights now hang. Tennessee / Court street. Anyone know about it? if so: patrickseth81@yahoo.com Court & MobileThis is the corner of Court and Mobile in downtown Florence. The camera seems to be perched in the old Rogers Department Store building. The modern Street View image is sadly not as interesting, though the City Cafe building and the building just to its left are both still standing today. I was born and raised in Florence. It's a great place to live, and downtown has fared a lot better than many cities its size. (The Gallery, Arthur Rothstein, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Small Towns)
Wisdom, Montana: 1942
... in a loaf of bread and tossing it into the fire. The night the Legion hall and all of these other buildings burned, Dad and his ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/03/2023 - 1:14pm -

April 1942. "Baker's Garage in Wisdom, Montana. Largest town, population 385, in the Big Hole Basin, a trading center in ranching country." 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon for the Office of War Information. View full size. Superb quality!The quality of this photograph is amazing. It looks like it was taken today. Do you have any more information on it? Wisdom MTGoogle Maps link. WisdomGreat photo. Thanks. The last remaining inhabitants eventually changed the name to "Boredom, Montana." Towns like thisTowns like this are a staple of western North America. In western Canada, their existence was justified by the railway and farmers hauling grain to their local elevators. Later they survived when the highway became the big thing and people stopped for gas or a little food on the road. There's probably a bar that the locals go to. Town's got a school maybe even a high school, and probably more than one church. There's a ball field and, in just about every prairie town in Canada though of course not the USA, a curling rink. In Saskatchewan they used to say that if you lived in a town that lost the school and the curling rink you might as well start looking for a place in Saskatoon or Regina. PennzoilThe Pennzoil logo hasn't changed much: WidsomIt looks like it's on the edge of a river valley? The colors in this shot are indeed amazing. I love the punch of the red gas pumps. [It's west of Butte. - Dave] CalsoWhat does it say on the sign leaning against the wall, underneath "Calso Gasoline"? Is that "Unsurcharged"? No extra fees? ["Unsurpassed." - Dave] Eternal WisdomUnderneath "Unsurpassed" on the Calso sign you have "The California Company" I found a modern picture of this place online: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4494303 Aside from the paved road, this place looks much the same. I don't think they sell Chevron or Mobil at those buildings anymore. Baker's Garage is now Conover's Trading Post. The painted Wisdom has long since faded from the old metal roof. The GarageI was raised and went to school in wisdom and Bakers Garage is not next to Ed Glassey's garage (The building with Wisdom on the top). Baker's Garage was across the street from Glasseys Garage (Looks like maybe they used photoshop to alter the photo) .. I moved to Wisdom in 1959 so if the photo is from 1942 maybe they moved the Building?? [The image, which is part of the Library of Congress photographic archive, has not been altered. It's one of more than 50 pictures of Wisdom taken by John Vachon in April 1942. Things can change a lot in 20 years. - Dave] Baker's Garage in WisdomI am a Wisdom native too. In talking to my dad. Bruce Helming, who is the oldest native still living in Wisdom, it turns out that Anna Lee and Roy Baker did own a shop across the street from the garage that you know as Baker's, which is now the Wisdom Market. It was the Chet Bruns Union 76 Garage back in the old days. Anna Lee was my dad's first cousin. Dad's folks adopted her when her parents died in the 1920s, and she was raised as Anna Lee Helming in Wisdom. My grandparents' (and later Dad's) business, Helming Brothers, bought out Chet Bruns' operation in the 1950s, which is when Anna Lee and Roy moved to the garage that you know now. The buildings shown in the photo were destroyed in the American Legion hall fire. I would guess that was in the early 50s, which is when all of the cemetery records were destroyed. Wisdom had no real fire department until 1961, so when a blaze was raging out of control, it was extinguished by placing dynamite in a loaf of bread and tossing it into the fire. The night the Legion hall and all of these other buildings burned, Dad and his uncle, Clarence Helming, were bringing the fire pumper to the scene. Just as they rounded the corner, "Boom," no more fire (and no more buildings). Gary Helming Helming@juno.com Pictures of Wisdom, MontanaI enjoyed looking at the old pictures of Wisdom and reading the text about them. I grew up near a small town (Gladstone, VA) and have always been kind of partial to them. I love looking at old pictures like these. Thank you for posting them. The Wisdom of YouthThis town holds a place in my heart. I spent most of my youth in Wisdom, from 1975 to 1990. The town hasn't changed a lot since I left, but has gotten smaller. When I started at Wisdom Elementary there were four classrooms. By the time I graduated to high school they were down to three. I hear there is only one class there now. For high school we were bused 65 miles to the Dillon, one of only two high schools in the county. It was an amazing place to grow up. Though everyone knew your business, everyone kept an eye out for you. We had two bars that all the kids hung out in and played pool. There were street dances for the Fourth of July and any other occasion. There were two restaurants, one of which burned down last week. It is hard to describe the life that a kid in a town this small would lead. The concept just doesn't make sense to city folk. But it was an amazing carefree life of swimming under the bridge, ice skating at the pond, nights of kick the can in the Forest Service field, greetings from the town's pet deer and raccoons. If it were possible to have the kind of lifestyle I have now in the city, I would move back to raise my child there in a heartbeat. Having lived near Wisdom for many yearsduring the summer-time, I can almost see the buildings. We haven't lived in Jackson for 20 years but the previous 8 years were spent on the Hairpin Ranch in a line shack about 5 miles past the main ranch, in the middle of nowhere. I loved EVERY minute of it. We traveled to Wisdom for dinner some days or just when the kids wanted to take a ride. It was a short 20 mile drive. Would move back in a New York minute. Early pioneers of the Big HoleI'm looking for any pictures or info of the early Wisdom families prior to 1930. I have an old school picture dated 1914/15 and would love to have someone help identify the children. Both sides of my family, the Elliott's and Scollicks were early settlers there. The old dilapidated log cabin on the south end of the Ruby near Butler Creek is the Scollick homestead and the Elliott log cabin is on Gibbonsville road. I believe my Aunt Eve Scollick might have married a Ferguson in the Wisdom area. There's a picture hanging at the Crossing/Fetties with several people on horses. Anyone that can help identify them as well would be great. (The Gallery, Kodachromes, Gas Stations, John Vachon, Rural America, WW2)
The New Nurses: 1914
... Row, extreme right: "Roll over please, tonight is enema night!" Good night nurses Instead of the usual "Everybody smile" that photographers ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/26/2012 - 11:42am -

Washington, D.C., circa 1914. "Georgetown University Hospital graduating nurses." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size. See hereQuick, everybody look in a different direction! Those collars!It makes me wonder if wearing neck rings was part of the training. Some of them look like they are ready to choke. And those bibs look to be absolutely bulletproof. If they could see the comfy "uniforms" that are worn now... Ouch2nd row, left hand side. I think she was the nurse that catheterized me. Daily QuizIf you were really, really sick, which of these ladies would you prefer to see walking into your room? There are lots of choices such as efficient, kind, bossy and even clueless. Real prosNow that's a uniform! It doesn't look easy to work in -- indeed, would this be what they wore for everyday work? -- but the very sight of all that clean and pressed white cotton is reassuring. Most of them seem quite young, but they look so capable. (Well, that sweet-faced young woman on the far left in front looks more like "Are we done yet? Can I go now?" But I feel that way about posing for group pictures myself.) 15 good reasonsnot to get sick. Facial expresssion tells it all.That "sweet-faced young woman on the far left" looks more like, "Autoclave? Why bother, he's going to die someday anyway." Men Don't Make PassesHowever, the two women in the back row wearing spectacles do look more intelligent. PythonesqueThe high stiff collars give a look like the faces are pasted on -- think intro to Monty Python's Flying Circus. National Nurses' WeekThe local hospital just ran a pic of nurses in whites for National Nurses' Week. Brought back memories of my late aunt starching and ironing her caps. So much more professional looking. Kathy BatesI don't think I want the nurse in the front left to tend my health needs--she may be my number 1 fan! Love a woman in uniformBack in the days of yore when nurses wore white uniforms you could tell who was in charge in the wards. Today every employee in a hospital wears scrubs, so you can not tell if you are talking to a nurse, records clerk, or a custodian, or the lady who will groom my dog at the vet clinic, or the receptionist at the dentist. These starched white uniforms loudly proclaim authority and responsibility for patient care. Uniformly uncomfortableI can't think of a single season in the DC area when this would have been a comfortable working uniform. I think they would be hot, sweaty, and chafe year-round for any nurse actually doing hard work bathing or moving a patient or running around a busy ward. Cross-dresserTop row, second from left - nice mustache, dude. Post 1912I reviewed the Washington Post archives trying to find out information on this specific class of nurses. From 1908 to 1912, the Post published the names of all graduates and a short piece on the commencement speaker. After 1912, the commencement exercises were apparently not as newsworthy. Given the class size in the photo, it must be 1913 or later. Class sizes for the published years are: 1908 (5); 1909 (3); 1910 (3); 1911 (10); 1912 (11, the largest class to date). Caption BalloonFirst Row, extreme right: "Roll over please, tonight is enema night!" Good night nursesInstead of the usual "Everybody smile" that photographers usually blurt out before snapping the shutter, it looks like this one yelled "Tenj hup!" And as a token gesture, they're all holding their diplomas like rifles, but other than that, not showing much enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, they all look like they just finished a 12 hour shift. They look like ER nurses!No lie. About a year ago I was in a ER at our local large city Hospital. I had a blood clot in my lungs caused by surgery the week before. I swear they all look just like these fine ladies but meaner. Soooooooooooo! times have not changed over the years. BUT I was glad to have them they did save my life. Even though they scared the hell out of me. All kidding aside nurses save lives and I do appreciate them.I bet they were really pretty girls when they did smile though. Class of 1914As the grandson of the "sweet-faced young woman on the far left," I can verify that this is the Georgetown University Nursing School Class of 1914. Food for thoughtThis is the first time I have been prompted to make such a comment, but I feel I must. Please, before you make any comments such as the several I've seen here regarding the personal facial features, attitudes, or intelligence levels of complete strangers (to you), stop and consider the fact that they may also be seen and read by fairly close relations of the person about whom you are remarking. It's not funny or even the least bit amusing to read such comments about complete strangers made by people who haven't the slightest clue about that person. Stop a minute about how you might feel if you were to read something like that about a picture that may be published here about your own great, great grandmother, or any relative. If you can say with complete honesty that you'd also find it amusing, or even acceptable, for total strangers to write such things about your family members, no matter how far back they go, then I must feel sorry for you and your lack of empathy for others. Concepts of facial beauty have changed greatly over the years, and will continue to evolve. And the use of obvious cosmetics or "beauty techniques" were quite unacceptable at this point in history, and women who obviously indulged in such things were automatically labeled as "loose" or "fast" or only excessively vain if they were lucky, otherwise they were seen as quite unacceptable in polite society. This didn't change totally for at least another 25 years. So, just because someone doesn't fit nicely into your own views of physical beauty in the 21st century, stop please, and think before you write it down here for all the world to see. Is it true? Is it right? Could it cause someone else pain or even anger? Would that person feel pleased to read it themselves? If the answers to those questions are "Yes, yes, no, and yes," then go right ahead - We will probably be pleased to read it. Otherwise, you are telling a great deal more about yourself than you are about them, so be sure to think about it before you decide to post it. I thank you. (The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing, Portraits)
Baby Shower: 1960
... rooms were invaded by friends and neighbors every Sunday night starting this year to watch "Bonanza" in Living Color. Deja vu I ... on the lights of the room I was in, when I watched TV at night, explaining that as the reason. Why watching TV in a darkened room ... 
 
Posted by Tony W. - 09/17/2011 - 8:11pm -

This is my grandma (who is no longer alive), pregnant with my father, making this around 1960. I'm fascinated by the mural above the fireplace and the little figures on top, but perhaps someone might know what the black thing on the table is? And, of course, the big blue thing and television are awesome. Scanned from a Kodak safety negative. View full size. FigurineDare I say, that black object looks like a figure of a panther. Now a cliche, then an object of pride? Black thing & Blue ThingI'm pretty sure the blue thing is a toy stuffed Humpty Dumpty and the black thing is a glass figurine - looks like a panther. Black ThingLooks like a ceramic cat (or perhaps a panther?). And that TV looks older than the photo year. My parents bought our first TV (a tabletop Magnavox) in 1954 and the screen was larger and more square than the one shown. Table-top ceramic sculpture?My guess is that "the black thing" is a glossy-black ceramic panther (I'm guessing the face end would have a few painted-on features in white or gilt), based on the "midcentury" stuff I grew up with (I'm a bit older than your father). BTW, someone has a vintage "Cal-Dak" laundry cart on eBay (ah, the wonders of the internet). Nice to have a (comparatively) younger Shorpy submitter--welcome! That thing on the tableI think that thing on the table might be a ceramic black leopard. My Mom used to have one of those on her front room coffee table.... Black...Panther... ceramic, glossy glaze...popular in the 50's The Black PantherThe thing on Gramma's coffee table looks like a fabulous fifties tchotchke, a ceramic panther planter. (Addendum: In the six minutes it took me to find the panther photo on eBay, six people beat me to the answer! Not to mention the dozens who are sure to follow.) The thing on the tableThe big black thing on the table is a ceramic black panther. The view is a little odd, but, its head is looking towards your grandmother and father-to-be while its tail is pointing at the photographer. Black thing on the tableIt looks to be a statue of a black panther; they're often pictured slinking around like that. My mom had one eerily similar to your grandma's that was also kept on a table. In fact, before I read the text, the statue was the first thing that caught my eye. Although panther statues like this are common, I'd bet my mom's and your grandma's are the very same. Shower?I'm guessing this was taken just after her baby shower. The item on the table looks to be a ceramic panther. The blue thing maybe a stuffed Humpty Dumpty. The gifts seem geared toward the coming baby, including the laundry cart for dirty cloth diapers. [Hmm. Could that be why the title of this post is "Baby Shower"? - Dave] One-upping the Panther FigurineThat's definitely a ceramic panther. My grandmother had one except hers was a lamp base with...wait for it...a plastic philodendron entwining the bottom. This wasn't her handiwork - it came from the store that way and was intended to give the impression that the stealthy cat was prowling the leafy undergrowth of the jungle. This lamp was placed in the most prominent place in the room: on top of the TV. Why one needs a lamp on a TV, I don't know. [Hugely collectible. Search on eBay for "TV lamp" -- there are hundreds. Including 16 panther TV lamps. Also a website devoted to them, tvlamps.net - Dave] LovelyYour Grandma was beautiful. What a lovely expression. Color TVI think what we have here is an early color TV, which used round CRTs well into the 1960s, like our 1965 model. Round B/W CRTs were on the way out by the early 1950s. It looks like the logo above the screen reads "PHILCO," who began producing color sets in 1956. If my surmise is correct, this was a rare family, perhaps one of those whose living rooms were invaded by friends and neighbors every Sunday night starting this year to watch "Bonanza" in Living Color. Deja vuI saw first of all the dress because I also was expecting a child in 1959 and had a dress like that (same color) and a fireplace like that and a shower like that -- way too eerie for words! I did not have a black panther! I can guess what she's thinking"Put that camera down and let me go take a nap!" Cool WoodI love the beige wood in the coffee table. Anybody guess what it is? Some type of maple or birch? My parents have a small desk in that same wood, and it extends out into a very long table. We sometimes used it when we had a lot of people over for a dinner party. Oh joy, a laundry cart! Just what every woman wants! Great looking shoes. Mid-Century BlondeThe table, I mean. Blonde walnut was a favorite furniture style of the 40s, whose pieces survived in many homes through the 50s & 60s. My best grade school chum's house was full of the stuff. It's also possible that the table top is wood-grained Formica. Humpty DumptyI've definitely seen lots of those Humptys over the years - I couldn't find a picture of one online, but here's a pattern for what looks to be the same guy (note sideways-looking eyes and bow on neck): Just maybeI can't be sure — perhaps someone else has noticed it, too — but that black figurine on the table seems to resemble — now stay with me on this, I know it's kind of a left-field guess — some sort of a large feline animal. Like a panther. Maybe. Black PantherDefinitely a black panther... my grandfather had the same exact one. Black PantherWithout question it's a black panther figure, a fairly common piece for the day. My late-grandmother also owned and displayed one; it remains in our family. Those little Asian figurinesThose little Asian figurines atop the fireplace mantel are also really something. My grandma had something like those candle holders, only they were salt shakers... Humpty HumpThat Humpty-Dumpty toy is near about the creepiest thing I have ever seen. The stuff of nightmares. CrackedIt seems like everybody in the world had one of those black panthers in those days. We had one - I was fascinated by it and wouldn't leave it alone (I was three years old). Of course I ended up breaking poor old Mr. Panther in half. Years later I found another one - with a "TV light" built in it - on eBay and I bought it. Kitten HeelsBut look at her shoes! Kitten heels with gold and clear plastic (?) instep. Seriously--one could wear those today. The dress too for that matter. My life's beginningsThis series sure makes me want to dig through all my old stuff. I was born in 1959, too. I have many of my dad's old slides that look so very similar to these. LaminatedIt looks to me like a laminate tabletop. My grandfather had one similar, with the end tables to match. Fast agingSomething doesn't add up here. There was a photo two days ago ("Father's Day 1964") of your Father, looking middle aged. Yet today's photo shows his Mom 4-5 years earlier, not yet having given birth to him? I'm totally confused. [Look above the photo to see who posted it. This pic was posted by Tony. The Father's Day photo was posted by tterrace. - Dave] Ah, the 21AXP22 ... the 21CYP22 ...That is a color TV for sure, and probably used the 21AXP22 kinescope which had a metal shell. Working on those sets back then, one had to VERY careful making adjustments anywhere near the shell of the kinescope (CRT) because the shell was carrying a full 25 KV! Yep, lots of memories working on those old color sets. Of course (little trivia here) if the set was manufactured around 1959, the CRT would have been an all-glass 21CYP22. In either case, both tubes required the use of a "safety glass" in front of the CRT face. Later tubes used an integral safety glass bonded directly to the face, eliminating the need for the external safety glass. And there, class, is your trivia for today! Discuss it among yourselves. Icons of the era This picture is full of period items. The ship’s wheel clock on the mantel, probably made by Telechron, the steel tube kitchen chairs, the asphalt tiles with the deco rug. The laundry cart in a corrugated cardboard carton. I wonder if it’s a Japanese import? This was just the beginning of such things. But what I get a charge out of most are the Dixie cups. Before a certain point in time, the only style available was that simple white with blue doodads. Now we have them in an infinite array of designer patterns. FlooredThis is the first time I've seen asphalt tile used in a home -- except for ours. Built just after WWII, there was little other choice I guess. Ugly as sin but lasts forever. Figures and cupsI remember those wax coated cups, vividly. We used them through the summers for picnics. The candle holder figures look Chinese, or possibly Japanese. My father's aunt had a few figures made in occupied Japan. At the time they were inexpensive but are now collector's items. What a pretty grandmother-to-be. Haeger PotteriesThe panther was Haeger Potteries signature piece of the period. The TimeOdd that no one mentioned the ship's wheel clock on the bookshelf. It seemed everyone had to have one of those, too. They came in many different sizes and bases, as I recall. [Jazznocracy mentioned it way down below. - Dave] Stack O' GiftsJudging from the pile of goodies stacked in front of the fireplace, I'd say Grandma made quite a haul on this day. Ah, the kindness of women invited to baby showers. Confused over ageOkay Dave, you have me totally confused. I just viewed a photo of you at age 14 in 1960. Yet here is a photo of your Grandma pregnant with your Dad in 1959/1960. How is that possible? [You are confused! These are not pictures of me, or my grandma. The age 14 pic is tterrace's photo. The grandma photo is Tony W's. - Dave] Floor TilesI had tiles like that in a house I owned a few years back in MPLS. It was a sweet little brick rambler built in '54. Mom of InventionI wonder if they had gift wrap big enough to cover the laundry cart box, or if they did what my mother and aunts did and used whatever leftover wallpaper they had gussied up with lots of pastel colored curling ribbons. TV lamps and other mid-century modern bad tasteThe reason TV lamps were created was that people of the era believed that watching TV in the dark would damage your eyes. I can remember, as a child, having adults turn on the lights of the room I was in, when I watched TV at night, explaining that as the reason. Why watching TV in a darkened room would hurt your eyes, but watching a movie in a darkened theater didn't, was never explained. But that is at least one origin kitsch lamps on top of TV sets. Oh, and those streaked floor tiles were everywhere. The ones in our house (built 1953) were black with green and ivory streaks. They were made of asphalt. Those beige ones may be all vinyl, or vinyl-asbestos. Asbestos was in a lot of 1950's home-things to "save" your house in the event of a fire. [Here is my theory: Most people like a lamp on if they're watching TV at night. Table lamps were often too bright for the relatively dim picture tubes in 1950s TV sets. TV lamps were a way to have ambient lighting that didn't wash out the picture. - Dave] Mantelpiece muralA mantelpiece mural like that would have been pretty unusual in most Southern California houses of the 1940s and 1950s. Tony, have you found other photos of the living room that might show more of it? Books!Someone should point out that there are actually books in the living room. It was about a decade after this that, as Nora Ephron noticed, the Reagans built the California governor's residence with a wet bar in the living room but not one bookshelf anywhere in the house. MuralisticThat mantel mural actually looks like a Van Gogh print, but I'd have to dig through my books to find which painting... The tree's dark outlining and wet-on-wet is Van Gogh's signature style. LovelyShe is lovely and every mom to be should be thrown a shower like this one. This is a classic mother-to-be photograph, I have one of myself on the day of my shower that is very similar. Does anyone know what that black thing is on the coff.... Hey look! A shiny new quarter!! Shower IILooks uncannily like my own mother's pics from when she was pregnant with me in 1959. TV next to the fireplace with bookcase behind. Makes me want to dig out my old Kodachromes and see what I can find. Mind if I smoke?Now that I am able to bring up the full sized image, I'm wondering if that's not a matchbook on the table. That smallest porcelain tray looks like an ashtray with telltale smudges in it. This was back in the day when pregnant women thought nothing of smoking through their pregnancy (as my own mom did in 1946). Gak! Bow-quetIn looking more closely at the large version of the photo, I noticed that Grandma is holding a bouquet made up of all the bows that must have been on the presents she received. The presents themselves are displayed in front of the fireplace. One is reminded that in those days baby shower gifts had to be gender-neutral -- the gift on top (some kind of blanket set?) is yellow and white. (PS - it was I who posted the Humpty Dumpty pattern - guess I forgot to log in...) TV, fireplace & bookcasePJMoore said: Looks uncannily like my own mother's pics from ... 1959. TV next to the fireplace with bookcase behind. Something like this? (1960) Mid-century pixI love the turn of the century pictures and the chance to pore over the details of buildings and cars and the ghost people, but these mid-century pix always attract lots of interesting comments. I am usually prompted to remember things I haven't thought about in years, like the bathroom floor in my childhood home that had those flecks of green, black and white that someone described below. More of both, please. Memories....This is a great photo of a moment in time. Perhaps frightening to some, I have that clock, a panther, and even ... sigh ... those tiles on my floor right now. The house was built in '55 and I was built in '54. Our panther is a relatively new member of the family, but my husband's pride and joy. Believe it or not, visiting his childhood friend, he saw it sticking out of the top of his trash can -- just four years ago! Ours is pretty fancy, with gold teeth and floral painting, and a chain connecting his collar to his leg so he can't get away from the coffee table! As kids, we were not allowed to watch TV in the dark, nor were we able to sit "too close." I even remember the deadly words my dad spoke when he warned us that "Renkin Units" were what was out to get us. Who is TV savvy enough to remember those and let us know if there was truly a danger? We apparently survived! Love the photo! Kathleen [I think your dad was probably saying "Roentgen units," i.e. X-rays. Color TV picture tubes did emit very small amounts of ionizing radiation. When we got our first color TV set in the late 1960s, my dad taped a dental X-ray tab to the TV screen with a penny between the film and the glass. After a week he took the film to his dental office and developed it. If the film showed a light circle (the penny) on a dark background, that would have meant there was measurable radiation. Luckily the film came out blank. - Dave] A contestAwesome photo. You and tterrace are going to have a color slide battle now here on Shorpy. I'll have to admit you both are my favorite photo posters. I'm more impressed with your contributions than my own. TV Furniture ChoicesI think you're right the TV set in the picture is a Philco. It is a mahogany cabinet. The choices were usually Mahogany or Oak. The Oak was a lighter color and the manufacturers had different names for it like honey oak, blonde oak or ash and charged about $20 more for it.. At one point, I think, RCA made a deal with Henredon and they supplied high end furniture cabinets for the RCA TVs. The TV business at that time had RCA and Zenith each with about 35% of the total sales, Philco, Admiral, Magnavox and the rest of them scrambling for the remaining 30%. Panasonic (using the name National) entered the U.S. market in 1959 followed by Sony, JVC etc. However they were only in the radio business at that time. Add one at homeI grew up in Canada and my parents has one of these panthers on the living room table. They also has a coloured tiger in their bedroom. My mom still has them! That's a black panther on the table...and they still sell reproductions. My great-grandfather had one. Jaspé LinoleumThe streaky pattern in the linoleum tiles was (and still is) called Jaspé (pronounced hasspay) by the flooring trade, and was meant to resemble marble or other grained stone. But it's a Spanish textile term originally used to describe handwoven fabrics with streaky patterns that were resist-dyed into the unwoven yarns prior to weaving the fabric. Although jaspé-patterned vinyl flooring is still available, it only comes in big rolls, and the traditional crossways laying of the streaks in the 10-inch linoleum tiles can't be done with the available product. I ran into this when I was working on the historical restoration of a 1935 exposition building in San Diego, and we had a heck of a time matching the original jaspé floor tiles in several rooms. Jaspé todayOh how I'd love that Jaspé tile for my 1950 California ranch house. Modern linoleum just doesn't have the "look" of vintage tiles. If they could make it sixty years ago, why can't they make it now? Popular GrandmaFifty Five comments. I think it is the most I've seen here. Grandma's photo struck a (many panther-related) chord with a lot of Shorpsters. Is fifty five comments a record? [It's definitely impressive but not even close to the record-holder, the OLL thread (Caution: Do not attempt to read while operating heavy machinery). Also the Beaver Letter. - Dave] Aunt Irene's ceramic shoeMy Great Aunt Irene had one of those black panthers. I always remember it sitting in her bedroom. The was an oval cutout in the top. As a child, she told me it was a shoe. I would always ask her, "How did you get your foot in there and where's the one for the other foot?" I wish I could remember her answer. I also remember wondering why it didn't break when you walked in it. One time I tried putting it on my foot and got in all kinds of trouble. Armstrong, KentileThis floor is probably not linoleum. More likely rubberized composite (Armstrong) or vinyl (Kentile). There's more info here. TV Lamp MuseumThere is an antique store in Northfield, Minnesota, that displays an incredible collection of those weird TV lamps. I'm sure they have a panther or twelve. It's a really neat place! http://www.tvlamps.net/christensen-collection.html Canadian IconThat stuffed Humpty on the floor is a cultural icon to 30-50 year olds who grew up in Ontario. He and his partner Dumpty figured prominently on a kids' TV show called "Polka Dot Door." Objet d'AshMy Nonna had one, except it had a built-in ashtray. No one in that house ever smoked, yet somehow she still felt the ceramic panther ashtray was a necessary thing to have. Humpty DumptyI love the stuffed Humpty Dumpty lying on the floor. My mother had a panther planter when I was growing up. I knew instantlywhat that "black thing" was- HERE IT IS!! IlluminatingThe panther design on the table was also popular as a TV lamp. It was felt that the ambient light generated by these lamps reduced eye strain, permitting guilt-free viewing. We had a panther TV lamp, at another time a panther planter, and one other time a panther like the one in your photo. We also had the Chinese candle holders, only ours were black. Black PantherI recently purchased a n original Black Pahtner like the one on the table. My aunt had all the Panthers; TV light, letterholder, planter, ashtray and figureine. I wanted the on in the antique story in her memory. I keep it above my desk. Ah, the 16WP4The TV set is from 1951, the first model year in which Philco used the split chassis--and the last that they used round black & white tubes. Absolutely not a color set. We had a black panther light just like that...I never quite understood why a black panther, but they were common. It is like surfing in a time machine this site! How beautiful!Your grandmother was a lovely, elegant lady. (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, Tonypix)
Trade You for an iPod: 1979
... daughter did a convincing boogie to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. She will totally grow up knowing the sound you hear ... squealing noise. My parents couldn't hear it so one night when my dad put in a tape and it started squealing, he didn't believe ... have a piece of gear I always wanted! Hi-Fi Fark As night follows day, so Farkification follows tterrace. Not to mention ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 06/30/2010 - 12:43am -

It's a sobering thought that this accumulation of consumer audio gear, though approaching high-end levels but not all that esoteric for the period, may look as archaic to present-day eyes as those examples of enormous, steampunk-like telephone and radio contraptions we've see here on Shorpy. Maybe if it was all black enamel rather than brushed aluminum it wouldn't look so old-hat, er, I mean retro. Of all this stuff all I have left is the turntable; a visiting friend recently took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of it in action, then emailed it to his daughter. He said she'd never seen a record playing. Lest anyone think that some form of perverse, fetishistic self-absorbtion inspired this as well as Beam Me Up, I took these photos as a status update for a fellow audio and video enthusiast friend who had moved out of state sometime previously. A Kodachrome slide which, in keeping with the theme of nostalgic technological obsolescence, was processed by Fotomat. View full size. Ripping a CD --- 1,411 kbps>> my kids laugh when I tell them they should rip/download everything at 320 kbps for best available audio quality Top Geezer, if you're ripping a CD, for best audio quality you should simply copy the native .WAV files off the disc, which is 1411 kbps. There's a setting in iTunes to let you do this. I can't let go eitherI still have most of my LPs, though I did sell all I could part with when I moved from California. Still Have my Linn Axis Turntable, My Wharfedale Diamond speakers from 1983 are barely broken in, but my NAD receiver bit the dust just last week. All this is up in the library along with my Nikon FE and my Rolleicord Twin-lens reflex. I think I'll go cry now. Jewel case #1When did you get your first CD player, and what was the first CD you ever bought? What did you think. tterrace: An Audio OdysseySome curiosity has been expressed, so here goes: I got into reel tapes because of what I hated about LPs, primarily tracking-induced distortion, particularly inner-groove toward the disc center, the grab-bag aspect of pressing quality, and of course the ticks, pops and inexorable deterioration. I got out of reel tapes because of what I hated about them: hiss and inconvenience. Hiss* was mostly taken care of by Dolby encoding, but that came during the format's final death throes and then new releases totally dried up with the advent of the CD. My first was in 1985, and I have to say I haven't missed in the slightest all the things I hated about tapes and vinyl. Tapes all went when I moved into a place too small to house them. LPs lingered because I missed the window of disposal opportunity when they still had some value, plus I was lazy. What I've kept have either nostalgia value - what was around the house when I was a kid, and some of my own first purchases c.1962 - or things not yet on CD, plus the aforementioned quads. I have to admit that I retain a certain fondness for the ritualistic aspects of playing physical media, but were it not for inertia - physical as well as mental, both undoubtedly age-related - I'd probably jump whole hog into hard disc storage, computer-controlled access and data-stream acquisition. And I'm not totally ruling out the possibility of getting there yet. *Desire to suppress tape his was the main reason I chose the Phase Linear 4000 preamp with its auto-correlator noise reduction circuitry. It kind of worked, but not transparently; I could hear the hiss pumping in and out. But it also had an SQ quad decoder that I eventually took advantage of when it was discovered that the audio tracks of some recent films on laserdisc and videocassette carried, unbilled, Dolby Stereo matrix surround encoding. By adding another small amp and two more speakers in back I amazed friends with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in surround sound well before it became a home theater mainstay. BTW: my advice is to use the Apple Lossless Encoder when importing to iTunes if you want maximum quality. Like FLAC, it's a non-lossy compression scheme, so there's no quality difference vs. the CD original, and you use less hard disc space. The past is the future which is nowHa! I still have my Pioneer PL-400 turntable, the same one I've been spinning on for the past 30+ years. Would love to have a tube amp, but honestly I can't beat the convenience of my early 90s Sony digital receiver. Eight functions/inputs, of which I use seven. To wit: phono [for the PL-400]; AM-FM tuner [built-in]; CD [Kenwood CD player - I don't even use it anymore]; DAT [Tascam TC-222 - has in/out so I can burn directly from vinyl to CD - and what I use to play CDs]; cassette tape [again, Tascam TC-222], video 1 [Sony DVD/SACD player - US region only]; video 2 [cheapo all-region DVD player]; and video three [MacBook or iPod]. My dad was an engineer for Motorola, and a ham radio and audio geek so I come by it honestly [thanks, Dad!] What I would give to have the reel-to-reel deck from our old living room! My kids are mp3 only, they think me a dinosaur, and laugh when I tell them they should rip/download everything at 320 kbps for best available audio quality. "It doesn't matter!" they say. I've worked in the independent record biz for 25+ years, and yes, it DOES matter. And only a house full of vinyl to show for it. The weirdest thing to me is the cassette revival these days. And some are doing it right, producing beautiful sounding reel-to-reel cassettes - metal reels, chrome tape, screwed plastic shells. Anyhow....not bragging or anything, just wanted to share. What a great photo and post! Thank you! Re: RippageThanx, Anonymous Tipster. I've looked in the preferences on my MacBook and found the import settings for WAV files, but I'm stalled there. What next? Also, the whole system comes out through Bose 2.2 monitors set into the corners of my plaster-walled living room. Turns the whole thing into one giant speakerbox. My friends are always amazed at how the vinyl sounds, esp live recordings. Once again, thanx to Dad. He gave me the monitors for my 25th birthday many, many years ago. How I miss him. [Anonymous Tipster notes that this is a setting in iTunes. So open iTunes. Preferences > General > Import Settings. Choose "Import using WAV Encoder." - Dave] My roommate had the "good stuff"We still listen to my Pioneer SX-780 receiver and my wife's Yamaha CR-420 receiver (both mid-70s) every day... mostly to NPR radio. The Pioneer also has my HDTV audio running through it in the living room. (I'm too broke for surround-sound, yet.) And with the help of an Apple Airport next to the computer in the other room and an Airport Extreme next to the Pioneer, we can stream our iTunes library all over the house. I can't argue with the true audiophiles here... the highest fidelity is lost on me these days (I'm wearing hearing aids, now). But ya can't beat the convenience factor of iTunes and a classic iPod for the sheer volume of songs you can have at your immediate access, not to mention building playlists or randomizing them--and it's all portable! But back to the past... As for turntable cartridges, my old roommate and I were always partial to the Stanton 681-EEE. We used those at the album-rock radio station where I DJ'ed (1975-78); they were practically industry-standard. They would set you back a couple of bucks, and maybe they were better than the turntable we had them in at home. But they made everything sound really great. It was my roommate, though, who had the Good Stuff. Top-of-the-line Pioneer gear, separate amp and tuner and a Teac 3340S R2R that used 10-inch reels. My tape deck was one of those unusual, slant-faced Sony TC-377 decks. Between the radio station and my roommate and all my friends "in the biz", I always had access to really great gear. Sadly, it usually wasn't mine. But I still have a ton of vinyl. Gimme that Old (High) School AudioYou know what I really, really, really miss about old-school electronic gear? Functions that had dedicated control switches or knobs, rather than being buried down several layers within one of an array of menus. Also, instantaneous response to switching or adjustments rather than digitalus interruptus, now made worse by HDMI wait-for-a-handshake. Dave: you are my hero. Very nice!I come from a long line of audiophiles, so even though I was only born in 1974, that all looks very familiar. Our setup was very similar, but we also had an 8-track. My current stereo setup has a fine-quality Dual record player I inherited from my grandfather. Just this morning, my 6-year-old daughter did a convincing boogie to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. She will totally grow up knowing the sound you hear when the needle first hits the vinyl, what we call the "crisp." And I have to agree with an earlier poster -- that totally looks like a modern photograph. How strange! StyliShure V15 Type V replacement stylus (Swiss) on eBay. [A few years ago I went to the local Circuit City (remember those?) and said I needed a new needle for my record player. The kid gave me a look like I'd asked where they kept the Victrola cranks. Finally the manager found one "in back." - Dave] MagnavoxWe were Magnavox Dealers for many years. They had one great feature, they were price-fixed. It was one of the few lines we carried that allowed us a full markup. Magnavox didn't have to police the sales pricing, we dealers ratted each other out if they were discounting. Now Magnavox is just another has-been brand (like Bell & Howell, Westinghouse or Sylvania) that can be licensed to put on any product. It shows up every once in a while on a promotional brand LCD TV or compact stereo system. Incidentally, tterrace, too bad you didn't live in Manhattan, you would have been one hell of a good customer. Love this stuffI started collecting vinyl in the mid to late 90s. It never really went away but now it's really picked up. There is hardly a major label release that isn't offered on vinyl. They are also reissuing classics as fast as the presses can make them. I bought my neighbor a turntable last year. He's now a more avid collector than I am. The real trick is keeping the vinyl clean at all times. I made a vacuum cleaning machine out of an old turntable. It does a fantastic job reviving dirty records. After they are cleaned, I slide them into a new anti-static inner sleeve. I use an anti-static brush to remove dust before each play. That removes a huge amount of surface noise. Cleaning the stylus is also important. To me, it's hard to beat the magic of a vacuum tube amplifier. I built my stereo amp from a kit about 9 years ago. You can build almost anything yourself with the kits being offered today. I build copies of classic vacuum tube guitar amps as well. I basically supply friends in local bands with free amps since I don't play guitar. It's a great hobby and soldering is a useful skill. There is just something about vinyl and do-it-yourself audio that gets you involved with the music. It makes it so much more personal. Those were the daysI used to have some stuff like that, and JBL L-100 speakers. Nowadays all that sound is still around, just smaller and in the car instead of the living room. Age vs. DolbyI don't have to worry about Dolby hiss anymore because my tinnitus is bad enough to where I hear the hiss in a silent room. I never went through a proper audiophile period mostly because I didn't have the money, but also because I never had a place where I could really put it to use until it was a bit too late. I still have my turntable but, like everyone else's, it needs a new cartridge; and the place where the stereo sits now has way too springy a floor (you can skip a CD by treading too heavily, much less an LP). These days the stereo spends most of its time being the sound system for the DVD player. My father went through his audiophile period in the fifties, and for a long time his system consisted of a tube amp whose provenance I do not recall, a massive transcription turntable and tone arm, and a home-built Altec cabinet with a 36 in. speaker (it was the '50s-- what's a crossover?). The speaker magnet weighed something like twenty pounds; the whole thing was the size of an end table. His hearing has gotten much worse than mine so he has been spared further temptation. Weird but trueAddendum - my PL-400 has two speeds - 45 and 33. What do you get when you add them together? 78. If I hold the speed button halfway down between 45 and 33, it spins at 78 rpm! I use a C-clamp to hold the button between the two and spin my 78s and have burned many of them to CD to rip into my MacBook. My 78s are now portable on my iPod. How cool is that? Phase Linear and Infinity Mon IIasBack in the mid seventies I was a service teck at a HI FI shop, We were dealers for PL and Infinity. PL was the first high-power company out there. I fixed lots of 400s (200s 200b 700s and Series 2, too). The larger Infinity speakers needed lots of power to drive. The 400 was up to it, but the crossovers in the Infinitys were very hard on the amps. The PL "turn-on thump" wasn't very compatible with the speakers. The auto-correlator in the preamp took away lots of hiss and noise, but also took away the soundstage. Plenty of tricks out there to "sweeten" up the sound of the 400, but not too many lived long enough. ELO ("Lucky Man") and Supertramp ("Crime of the Century") helped us sell lots of PL and Infinitys! I still own a pair of Mon IIas, have a few friends that still have theirs. Mon Jrs too! On another note, it was common to find audio nuts who were also camera crazy! Never seen a record playing??Tterrace, I hope your friend's daughter catches up with the times. Vinyl is in style again. Just today I went shopping with some friends and we bought a total of 35 LPs. It's smelling mighty technical in hereWAV? On a Mac? Phf. (AIFF is the native uncompressed format on Mac.) If you don't have space concerns, use Apple Lossless format, which is about half the size of AIFF or WAV. But really, 320 mp3 or AAC should be more than good enough for kids listening on an iPod. Considering how all the pop stuff these days (if that's what they're into) is so compressed (aurally, not bitwise) and saturated, it already sounds bad on the CD, so why waste the space ripping it at a high bit rate? [Lots of us (yours truly among them) are moving their CD collections onto hard drives or dedicated music servers. The .wav format has several advantages. - Dave] The most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. The standard audio file format for CDs is LPCM-encoded, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM uses an uncompressed storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software. AIFF is also PCM in its uncompressed forms. And since "top geezer" specifically mentioned he's using a Mac, it only makes sense to use a format that was made for and will work better on a Mac. That'd be AIFF or Apple Lossless if he wants something without the [possible] audible colorings of mp3, AAC, or compressed WAV. Zero historyI recently finished reading the galley of the new William Gibson book, "Zero History." As with several of his earlier books (and about half of Pixar's films), it concerns itself with the relationship between humans and the things we create. We make clothes and stereos and computers, but then we define ourselves by these things as well, so which is really central -- us, or our things? Zero History raised an interesting point about patina, in that some things become more valuable if they show signs of use and others are more valuable if they are mint in box. A stereo system, I think, would fall into the latter category. Anyway, that's an eye-catching setup. Thanks as always for sharing. Questions, questionsRetro-audiophile lust! 1. Brands and model numbers please. 2. Where's your Elcaset deck? Ray GunI also have a nifty little anti-static-electron-spewing sparky gun, pictured to the right side of your "record player". http://www.tweakshop.com/Zerostat.html I BetBet your turntable plays 78s and 16s as well as 45s and 33s. I have a cheap Garrard changer of about the same vintage that does all four... which came in rather handy when I started picking up 78s at the local Symphony's book and music sale a few years ago. Oh, OKNever had an Elcaset deck, nor 8-track. I do still have a MiniDisc deck, though. Shelf-by-shelf going down: Technics SL-1300 direct-drive turntable w/Shure V15 Type V cartridge; ZeroStat and Discwasher. Phase Linear 4000 preamp; 10-band graphic equalizer whose details escape me for the nonce. Concord outboard Dolby unit atop Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel tape deck. Kenwood KX-1030 cassette deck. Phase Linear 400 power amp. Not shown: Infinity Monitors with the easy-to-blow-out Walsh tweeters. Somebody tell me how to get a replacement stylus for the V15 Type V. FashionsInteresting though that you -- the clothes and hair -- would fit in just fine today. Men's clothes haven't changed much in 30 years. Sure there's newer styles, such as the stupid "falling down pants" with underwear hanging out and such, but the newer styles haven't replaced the old standbys. We tend to think of fashions of the past lasting for a long time, but if you look at any 30 year time period in the pictures on Shorpy you'll see that the fashions change drastically. All in all, the picture looks like it could have been a picture of vintage equipment taken yesterday. Living it old schoolThe system here in my studio: Pioneer RT-909 open reel (10") Pioneer RT-707 open reel (7") Pioneer PL-530 turntable Pioneer CT-F1000 cassette deck Pioneer SX-727 receiver Elac/Miracord 10-H (turntable for 78s) Tascam 106 mixer Tascam 112 cassette deck Sharp MD-R3 cd/minidisc Kenwood KR-A4040 reciever TEAC X-3 Mk II open reel (7") TEAC X-10R open reel (10") Otari MX-5050 (open reel (10") KLH Model Six speakers Infinity RS-2000 speakers iPod 60gig (first generation) Let me do some mind reading.The Fotomat you took your film to was in the parking lot of Co-op shopping center in Corte Madera. Your stereo equipment was bought at Pacific Stereo in San Rafael. Or was it that high end place down at the Strawberry Shopping Center? All very cool looking stuff. I have just broken into my old gear I bought back around 1975 at P.S. I'm currently listening to some old LPs that were my grandmother's. It's fun, and they do sound better than CDs. As far as the stylus goes, check around online. There is quite a bit of interest and information about this hobby. Reel to reelI remember when "logic" was advertised as a technological breakthrough. I'm old. Call me old schoolAll I need is a vintage Voice of Music turntable to fit in my restored 1950 Magnavox cabinet model 477P radio/record player. It never had the TV option installed so I put in an inexpensive small TV from Wally World, the cable box and wireless gear. www.tvhistory.tv/1950-Magnavox-Brochure3.JPG I have the Contemporary in mahogany. Mice had been living on the original turntable. Construction of the cabinet is first rate. Sorry for drooling into your gearI always liked those Pioneer reel-to-reel decks, but still lust for a Teac. Nice Phase Linear stuff there. That's maybe an MXR EQ? Tiny, stiff sliders with rubber "knobs"? And a slide-out shelf for the turntable? But I think the real star here is the cabinet on the right with the neato doors. Jogging the tterrace memory banksThank you sjmills, that was indeed an MXR equalizer, and exactly as you described it. I eventually connected it with mega-long cables so I could fiddle with it endlessly while sitting in my acoustic sweet spot. What's under the turntable is actually an Acousti-mount, a spring-footed platform designed to minimize low-frequency feedback from the speakers. I still use it. The outfit that made it, Netronics Research & Development, is still in business I see. The smaller cabinet at right was actually my first audio equipment cabinet; my folks got it for me c.1964. It was originally designed as a piece of bedroom furniture, and was solid wood, unlike the later composition-board larger one. And rgraham, that's where the Fotomat was, and some gear did come from Pacific Stereo in SR, but the Phase Linears were beyond them; they came from some higher-end Marin place I've forgotten about. The turntable plays only plays at 33 & 45. My online searches for replacement Shure V-15 styli usually only turn up outrageously expensive new old stock or alleged compatibles whose descriptions give me the willies. Just within the past couple months my LP collection has shrunk from around 18 down to 4 linear feet. Tape squealWow, I was born the year this was taken, and when I was growing up we had one of those cassette players on the second-from-the-bottom shelf. At least, it looks very similar to what I remember. I hated it, though, in its later years while playing tapes it would randomly emit an extremely high-pitched, screeching, squealing noise. My parents couldn't hear it so one night when my dad put in a tape and it started squealing, he didn't believe that there was any and just thought I was covering my ears and begging for it to be turned off because I hated the music, until my brother came downstairs and asked what that screeching noise was. Gonna have to show this to the husbandHe will genuflect, then get a certain far-away look in his eyes. Shelli Is that a static gun?Just bellow his right hand in the background.... a static gun for zapping away the snap-crackle-pop static before placing the vinyl record on the turntable. That WAS state of the art! High School Hi-FiI will confess to still having my high-school stereo. Akai tape deck, Pioneer amp and tuner from 1977-78. The last of which I have duplicated (triplicated? Thanks, eBay) for Shorpy headquarters. Also some Sony ES series DAT decks and CD players. Acoustic Research speakers. Squirreled away in a closet, my dad's 1961 Fisher amp and tuner (vacuum tubes). Sold on eBay: Dad's early 1960s Empire Troubadour turntable. (Regrets, I've had a few.) AnalogueryNo way would I trade old analog gear for an iPod. Any good audiophile will take vinyl or a good analog source over the compressed, squashed and mastered with no dynamics file formats that iPods handle. I'm convinced that audio (recording techniques and gear) peaked in the '70s and '80s. While we have some pretty impressive gear available in this day and age, I've got some vintage gear that sounds pretty good yet and is arguably better than some more clinical sounding stuff made today. Vinyl is back as well. Local record stores are now stocking more and more vinyl. Consumer electronic shows are full of brand new turntables and phono preamps. I would love to have that Phase Linear stuff in my audio racks! Great shot. We've come a long way.But wasn't all that stuff cool? I happen to love the before MTV days when listening to tunes was a great way to relax and reflect. I think music was better too, but then I'm showing my age! I've got that same turntable.When I dug it out of the closet a few years back and needed a tune-up, I discovered I lived just a few blocks from what may be the last store of its kind. He'll have your stylus. No website and he deals in cash only -- pretty much the same set-up for the last 60 years. J and S Phonograph Needles 1028 NE 65th St Seattle WA 98115 (206) 524-2933 His LordshipI cannot read the text, or clearly recognize the person, on whatever is located to the right of the reel to reel unit but, the person looks a little bit like Lord Buckley. Heavy Metal n Hot WaxI still have about 500 pounds of old Ampex and Marantz gear, and over a thousand vintage and new vinyl sides. Sold that stuff in the 70s and worked for a recording studio in the 80s. Always a trip to give the old tunes a spin on the old gear. With DBX decoding some of those old discs can give CDs a run for the money as far as dynamic range goes. But to say any of that sounds better than current gear is wishful thinking (remember the dreaded inside track on a vinyl LP?). Most any reasonably good, digitally sourced 5.1 setup with modern speakers will blow it away. Those were the daysThis brings back memories of dorm rooms in 1978. First thing unpacked at the beginning of the year was the stereo equipment. Last thing packed at the end of the year was the stereo equipment. Love the brushed denim jeans. I only had them in blue. Back in the DayNothing could beat the sound that jumped off the turntable the first time a brand new LP was played. Electrifying! No tuner?Ah, the days of audio purity. Am I missing the tuner, or were you a holdout for the best-quality sound, no FM need apply? Great to see that stack of equipment. I'm still using my Sony STC-7000 tuner-preamp from 1975; it doesn't have all the controls of your Phase Linear, but just handling it takes me back to the good old days. Tx for the pic! R2RI grew up in a household like this, and the reel-to-reel was my father's pride and joy. But can anyone name the recording propped up next to it? It looks like Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Orchestra, except for the unbuttoned collar. Vinyl's FinalI've never been without a turntable. Currently, I have a Rega Planar 3 with a Pickering XV15-1200E cartridge. Bought my first LP in 1956 and I'm still buying new ones. My receiver/amp is a Fisher 500B, a vacuum tube gem. My speakers are highly efficient Klipsch 5.5s, which are great sounding "monkey coffins." I've a Panasonic CD player and Pioneer Cassette deck for playback of those obsolete formats. Further audio responseNext to the reel deck is the box for a London/Ampex pre-recorded tape, conductor Antal Dorati on the cover; can't remember other details. No tuner, as FM audio had too many compromises for my taste. I had a receiver in the video setup for FM simulcasts (remember them?), plus I ran the regular TV audio through it to a pair of small AR bookshelf speakers. In defense of the iPod (which I use for portable listening - Sennheiser PX-100 headphones, wonderful - and did you know Dr. Sennheiser died just last month?), it can handle uncompressed audio files just fine, plus Apple's lossless compressed format, so you're not restricted to mp3s or AAC. For what I use it for, AAC is perfectly OK, and to be honest, my ears aren't what they used to be anyway. Still, for serious listening I plop down in the living room and put on a CD or SACD, or some of my remaining vinyl. Among other LPs I saved all the matrixed Quad (SQ and QS format) which Dolby ProLogic II does a reasonable job of decoding. Finally, thanks to everybody for the hints about the Shure stylus replacements, I'll check those out. Snobs!You guys and your fancy stereos. Here's mine from back in the 70s. Tuner and speakers were Pioneer I think. No idea about the turntable. Don't ya love the rabbit ears and the cord leading to the swag lamp? And of course the whole thing sat on a "cabinet" made of bricks and boards. Is that you, Arturo?Perhaps the 7-track box cover is showing Arturo Toscanini conducting a Casual Friday concert? Never saw it comingSo the future is here already? This story is both sad and frightening. Now I can't sleep without the lights on. Two-and-a-half questions: Didn't your PL 400 get a little toasty under that shelf, pushed up against the side? Did you have LPs up on the top shelf like that in October of '89? And, if so, did they stay there? That is (was) some nice gear. I'm tearing up just a little. DoratiThe tape is a 1975 recording of Antal Dorati conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in three works by Tchaikovsky. I knew I had it on LP at one time, but I had to resort to ebay to identify it. Vinyl livesWe still have a couple hundred LPs stored carefully in the garage (don't worry, they're safe from damage!). A few years ago, we had a yard sale and had the garage open but roped off. I had one guy nearly foaming at the mouth when he saw our collection. I nearly had to physically restrain him from going in and grabbing everything! We also have an turntable that's about two years old. No, it's not top of the line, but my teenage sons LOVE the silly thing and DS#2 just bought a NEW Metallica LP! He plays the *&$%## thing when he's doing the dishes. I sound like my mom: "Turn that racket down!" The PlattersThere were around 2½ million vinyl albums sold last year in the United States, which would account for 1.3 percent of music track sales. So basically it's a novelty format, like dial telephones. IncredibleMy father had everything you have in this picture, and it brings back some incredible memories I had as a child of the 70's. 1970's Man Cave!This guy had it going on. Reel too realSold off the last of my old stereo gear (nothing too impressive) at this year's neighborhood garage sale, but I've got that same Pioneer deck sitting next to me right now. Recent craigslist purchase, necessary to digitize some of my "historic" airchecks I've been lugging around for the last 40 years. Funny, I wasn't nearly as good as I remember but it is nice to have a piece of gear I always wanted! Hi-Fi FarkAs night follows day, so Farkification follows tterrace. Not to mention j-walkblog. Love the systemReally nice system. We have seven Telefunken consoles of different sizes and styles that we really enjoy. Nothing sounds as nice as vinyl played through those 11 tubes, and the quality of a stereo that cost the price of a new VW back in 1958 is as good as you'd expect. Enjoy these "artifacts," since they (in my opinion) outperform even a new high-end Bose, Kenwood or other system. Vinyl, Shellac, and Garage Sales Rock!I got back into vinyl (and shellac) about 5 years ago. There was a tiny hole-in-the-wall used high-end audio shop in my area where I got a gently used Technics 1200 series TT for $250. Got a 30+year-old Sure V15III cart and new stylus for a lot of money, about $175! I haven't looked back 3,000 LPs later, and if you've had a garage sale in SW Michigan, you've probably seen my happy face at some point! :-) Love having the artifacts in my basement, and love making MP3s out of them even more for portability. Living in the present does indeed rock sometimes. I can't remember the last time I purchased a CD... (Sadly, Bill's Sound Center closed when they demolished the whole place for a snazzy Main St. Pub.) Nostalgia never goes awayI'm not a technophile, but I know what I like...I'm going to go into the living room right now and fire up some Louis Prima on my old Benjamin Miracord turntable! Recovering Open Reel FanaticBack in the late '70s through sometime in the early '80s you could still get current-issue prerecorded open-reel tapes. Probably very few folks were paying attention, but YES for a SINGLE PENNY you could get a dozen of them when starting your brand-new membership with ... (shudder) Columbia House. It wasn't long before they stopped offering open-reel for all their titles, but the ones in the advertisements were available in any format, and I still have the ones I got early on, and some of the automatic monthly selections. (Damn they are heavy, too. Like a box of iron filings.) Somewhere around here I have Steely Dan and ELO albums on open-reel tape. It became hard finding things I wanted to listen to, though, so I had to finish out my membership agreement by getting some LPs, and that's about the time I started to realize the things from the club looked OK but were made of inferior materials and did not always sound quite right. But of course I was about fifteen years old and it was an educational experience. It took me a few more years to get over my fascination with open reel decks, but I still have two corroding in the garage. Anyone remembertape deck specs for "wow and flutter"? Vinyl - jazz and bluesI still have the bulk of my jazz and blues vinyl collection, though I did unload some of it. Had to buy a new amp last month to play them after my old one gave up after at least 25 year service. Got a Cambridge Topaz AM1, not very pricey but does the job. Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk rule! Am I actually this old?This was stuff I longed for in the '70s, but never managed to afford. To me it still feels semi-contemporary and definitely impressive. BTW, is the very concept of high fidelity now as out of date as this old hi-fi equipment? Judging from the execrable audio I've heard coming out of a series of cell phones I've owned over the last decade, I'm beginning to think that the basic ability to notice audio distortion may have been lost as interest in hi-fi was lost. Reel-to-reel had an advantageOne could copy whole albums, and the length was for hours. In the late 80's, I knew some serious audiophiles who had Carver CD players, Nakamichi cassette players, and reel-to-reel players, on which they'd store hours of jazz music. Turntable MemoryMy buddy and I have been mobile DJ's for close to 30 years. Back in the days of lugging three large boxes of LP's and 4 heavy boxes of 45's, sometimes up flights of stairs, and index cards for looking up song location, we had two QRK turntables we got from the radio station where my friend worked. One evening we were on the upper level of a hall with a very spungy floor. We didn't realize how much the floor would move until we started a polka and the dance floor filled with people. A few moments later the record skipped and we realized that we were bouncing, a lot. We grabbed a few quarters out of our pockets and put them on the tone arm, and then both of us pressed down with all our might to keep our stand from moving. We were very, very afraid to play anything uptempo. I still have a turntable, a bunch of vinyl, and a Teac open reel deck. I'm converting some shows I did many years ago to digital. (ShorpyBlog, Technology, Member Gallery, Farked, tterrapix)
There Was a Crooked House: 1962
... makes this a very cool picture. Just Another Wednesday Night? I like how you positioned your desk lamp to throw a silhouette of the ... photos, where stuff like "Jacinte 1972" appeared in the night sky in cursive script. That was supernatural in origin. The Polaroid ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 07/11/2019 - 1:26pm -

Shorpy being the Historic American Photo Archive, and me being American and at this point in my life historic, I present from my archive a nighttime photo experiment I performed in winter 1962 while a teenage camera geek. This is how I made this time-exposure of our Larkspur, California house: I turned on all the lights in the front-facing rooms, also those on the porches and front walk, and added one more (my desk lamp) below the front porch. I set up the camera (an old c. 1920 folding job) in the cactus garden, opened the shutter, ran down to the bottom of that stairway and wrote out my name with a little flashlight, then ran back up and closed the shutter. Voilà! I used that old camera, a Kodak Folding Autographic Brownie 2A, because it was the only one around the house then that could take time exposures. No tripod receptacle, so I had to balance it on something or other. (I know it's winter because of the burlap sacks covering the lantana for frost protection. Oh, and before you ask, no, we're not related to the Addams family.) Scanned from the original "116" 2½ x 4¼ negative, slightly cropped at top. View full size. The eyes have it.I think you have unknowingly presented us with an optical illusion. The glassed in porch, at first glance, appears to project from the front of the house, yet there appears to be an archway into the front room of the house. Upon closer inspection, it's obvious that the archway is actually the entrance from outside to the porch and not into an interior room. BrowniesOne of the best pics I ever took was as a pre-teen with a Brownie. Don't know the model, just that it was a Brownie. My brother was on a swing. He is stop motion, everything else blurry. I ever find a print, might post it (if he agrees). And by the way, you might not be related to the Addamses, but the picture says otherwise! Good picture. Nifty Shot and Nifty CameraWe ought to have a grouping of treasured old cameras that our spouses would love to see us toss! Here's an old favorite of mine that is now a paperweight in my office: A Minolta 110-cartridge zoomer that we used to call a "Big Mac" camera. Wish I had thought of it when naming my kids"Rau" is a very interesting name. Tim Burton-esqueI love the crookedness which, due to the ghostly lighting and the pipe-like thing sticking up (sorry; don't know what it actually is), resembles the tilted cityscapes in Burton films. The long flight of steps (I count nineteen) is charming, as is the shadow produced by the latticework. Fascinating shot. [Pipe-like thing is the tall flue atop our fireplace chimney. - tterrace] Other ArtistI believe MC Escher would like this photo. Your nameis Rau? Cool shot. What does the house look like now? [Current owners had it looking like this in 2015. -tterrace] CoolYour story makes this a very cool picture. Just Another Wednesday Night?I like how you positioned your desk lamp to throw a silhouette of the latticework onto your house. What I don't understand is why no member of your family is looking out a window in an effort to answer, "What is that boy doing out there?" [They stopped asking that question long before this. -tterrace] Brownies and ButchersA wonderful photo! The twilight in black and white is both mysterious and innocent at the same time. Your mention of 116 size film makes my shutter button finger tingle. I've got a small collection of antique cameras that are fascinating to use, the varying sizes of extinct film being just one of the challenges. They like to go out for walks. Last week I shot my first roll of film in my 1913 "Butcher's Watch Pocket Carbine." It was designed to take 117 size film, but I sanded down the end flanges of a 120 spool -- very carefully -- until it fit. No digital image can satisfy like a roll of 12 perfect images emerging from the fixer. Vintage camera rallyI'll go with Jim Page's idea with this shot that includes the Kodak Folding Autographic Brownie 2A I used to take the time exposure of our house. This also dates from 1962, and I took it with yet another folding Kodak of similar vintage we had around, but whose identity I've forgotten; it took 120 roll film. Also is the Kodak Brownie Starmite I got for Christmas 1961 that could at last let me shoot 2x2 color slides, but not time exposures. Slide projector was my brother's from about 1955 and also two of his Kodak slide boxes. Old Camera I Loved and LostTterrace, did your brother's projector take slides in those horrible aluminum mounts that I DIDN'T hate to see the last of? I love your mirrored shot!!! I feel as though I can dive into a pool of memories. If Tom Wolfe was still around, he could probably describe this '50s Anscoflex II best. Maybe a "Loewy styled 620 format top viewer olive green not really TTL baby" or something like that. Mine, NOS in the box with the matching goodies, disappeared in a yard sale my wife snuck in when I was out of town. AAAGGGHHH. [The projector must have taken those metal/glass slide mounts, because that's what my brother used for the roll of Ektachrome he developed in the kitchen sink in 1955. I finally extracted them for scanning a few years back. -tterrace] Was your house built by Robert Heinlein?As I scanned the comments, I had a browser window open to... "'—And He Built a Crooked House—'" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in Astounding Science Fiction in February 1941. Link https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v26n06_1941-02_dtsg0318-LennyS#pag... Miraculous PhotosIt looks like Veronica Leucen's miraculous Bayside photos, where stuff like "Jacinte 1972" appeared in the night sky in cursive script. That was supernatural in origin. The Polaroid corporation attested that there was no known explanation for it. New camera smellAn aspect of the olden days I always recall with fondness is how the gear smelled when you opened the packaging. Camera gear and binoculars had a distinct odor that zips me back to those times whenever I get a whiff of it. The other distinct smell of those days, of course, was from that fake/reprint Confederate money printed on crinkly yellow paper. That money was sold at Stuckey's and other tourist attractions and if I saw it, I'd buy it. Love itA great pic and a great story. Thanks for sharing it. NameIt’s Paul, isn’t it? Not Rau. [Shhhh! -tterrace] (ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, tterrapix)
A Busier Bisbee: 1940
... Mercantile . - Dave] Neon Signage lit up at night I imagine it sure would've looked pretty. And attention grabbing. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/23/2018 - 7:06pm -

May 1940. "Main street of Bisbee, Arizona. Copper mining center." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size. Walgreen AgencyNote the Walgreen Agency drugstore. "One of the most significant expansions during the 1930s was the establishment of an agency cooperative purchasing system, whereby Walgreen's products became available in a number of independent pharmacies. By 1934, there were 600 agencies in 33 US states, stocking over 1,000 Walgreen's products. At its peak the Walgreen's Agency system had more than 2,000 participants within the network. The system continued until 1980, when the administration of the cooperative purchasing program was discontinued." On another note, Walgreen's invented the Malted Milkshake. I did not know that. Copper Mining EconomicsIn the 1970's, I lived a few months in Ajo, Arizona. Phelps Dodge operated an open pit copper mine and smelter there. It was a company town. The price of copper spiked while I was there, and the workers were put on a 12 hour workday, seven days a week for four weeks, and then took a weekend off. On Monday, they started a new cycle of 12 on and 12 off. Most of the modest housing was built by Phelps Dodge and rented to the workers. After working for Phelps Dodge for five years, the workers could buy their house for $1. National brands squeezing out the local guysThis is 1940 and I see Walgreen's, JC Penney, Woolworth's, Coca-Cola, Florsheim, Rexall, and maybe Blue Ribbon. I hear so much about Chain Stores and national brands squeezing local stores as some modern problem, and here we are in the photograph. All we need is for that business at the end of the street to be a Sears. Many years ago Sears was accused of shutting down Main Street as Wal-Mart is today. [That's the company store at the end of the street -- Phelps-Dodge Mercantile. - Dave] Neon Signage lit up at nightI imagine it sure would've looked pretty. And attention grabbing. The Review lives on. Looking from the other end of the street. More of the Bisbee Daily Review. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Russell Lee, Small Towns)
Grief: 1915
... statue and wondered about the meaning of it. Twelfth Night Shakespeare "A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/04/2012 - 9:40pm -

Washington, D.C., circa 1915. "Grief monument, Rock Creek cemetery." Augustus Saint-Gaudens's ambiguously enigmatic bronze memorializing Clover Adams, the society hostess whose suicide led to its commission by her husband, the writer Henry Adams. National Photo Co. Collection glass negative. View full size. "TMOTHATPOGTPU"Saint-Gaudens's name for the bronze figure is The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but the public commonly called it Grief—an appellation that Henry Adams apparently disliked. In a letter addressed to Homer Saint-Gaudens, on January 24, 1908, Adams instructed him: "Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption—Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Men's Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx." -- Wikipedia I remember studying this in college and the ambiguity of the figure sent critics of the time into a tizzy. The lesson ultimately learned was the critics filled in the blanks with their own personal baggage and interpreted the meaning incorrectly. What's In Your Wallet?Grief. AwesomeI have lurked in the background for many months, but must break my silence to comment that this is one of best from an incredible collection. It is haunting in many ways, but does speak volumes to the soul of this observer. Thank you Shorpy for all that you bring to the light of those who appreciate the world of photography and the representated life from the past. A Baltimore LegendA copy of this statue became the infamous "Black Aggie" here in Baltimore. http://www.prairieghosts.com/druidridge.html Pop QuizThis monument made it into the history books, I believe I had to memorize a slide with it! I know this is sad but....it kind of creeps me out! The Education of Henry AdamsIn his famous autobiography, Henry Adams doesn't mention his wife at all, but he does talk about this statue without identifying its purpose. BittersweetOh, but this is beautiful -- and the ambiguity works, too -- don't know if it was Henry or Clover of the personification of grief itself. Roosevelt tieIn her first stay in Washington (when her husband was Assistant Secretary of the Navy), Eleanor Roosevelt would spend hours meditating on this spot. Joseph Lash wrote in "Eleanor and Franklin" that she envied the peace reflected in the tranquil face of the statue. GriefGood heavens what a stunning work and remarkable bit of photography! I've been gazing at her at every opportunity for a day now, and have more questions about what she says now than I did yesterday. Is she still there? [Yes. - Dave] Lived with her (?) for 20 years.My Father was Superintendent of Rock Creek Cemetery and my family lived in a house within the gates. I can't count the times I've looked at this statue and wondered about the meaning of it. Twelfth Night Shakespeare"A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?" That's what comes to mind when I see this statue. Give Me Good DirectionsWhile in Washington for the Inauguration, I drove all over the cemetery looking for this monument, which I first learned of in reading Gore Vidal's Empire. I became a fan of John Hay, which led me to the other eponymous half of the Hay-Adams House, Henry Adams and his dynamos. I would very much appreciate specific directions once inside the cemetery. Thank you. Jeff Noble [Click here. - Dave] We've met.This statue gave me the heeby jeebies when I first saw it. I just happened to be riding through the cemetary. But I knew some great artist created it. FantasticalBeing a taphophile, I of course love this and want to photograph it myownself. Maybe someday. Wow, I absolutely love this.And thanks to JennyPennifer for "taphophile." I always knew I was one, just didn't know the name for it. (The Gallery, D.C., Natl Photo)
Paper Doll: 1936
... to keep the bed bugs from crawling into bed with you at night. Life was much different back in the 30's and 40's. No smoke ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/03/2023 - 4:45pm -

May 1936. "Sharecropper shack. Kitchen of Ozarks cabin purchased for Lake of the Ozarks project. Missouri." Photo by Carl Mydans, Resettlement Administration. View full size. FiretrapI would be surprised if that shack lasted more than a week or two without burning down. We have dried out single ply newspaper hanging on the walls inches from a wood fired stove and hot pipe, and as if that was not enough there is what appears to be a kerosene can just to the left of the little girl's feet. I just hope nobody was inside when it went up. Newspaper for wall covering.My mother has told me many stories of her childhood. She remembers well her mother using a flour/water mix to paste newsprint on the walls. It sealed the cracks and was a very good insulator. But that didn't stop the wind from blowing up through the floor or her seeing critters between the floor board cracks. She also tells with great detail how their house burned to the ground when she was four. One final thought, she told me her mother would set the bed posts in small cans of kerosene to keep the bed bugs from crawling into bed with you at night. Life was much different back in the 30's and 40's. No smoke detectorsI wouldn't want to consider the level of fire hazard in this kitchen. The newspaper curtain has a nice touch. Somebody really cares. But God help the occupants of this residence if the stove backfires. Mrs. Roosevelt's newspaper columnOn the wall to the left of the stove and just above the washboard, the newspaper/wallpaper has Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's almost-daily column called "My Day". I believe she was much more in front of the American public on a regular basis than our most recent First Ladies - and not just in the papers. Lot of people didn't like that, but many others did. Mrs. FDR wrote that column from 1935 to 1962 six days a week. She was a force to be reckoned with. Christmas ClubWhen I saw the ad for "Christmas Club" in the newspaper I immediately tripped down memory lane. When I was a little girl I remember going to the Bridgeville National Bank to start a new Christmas club. First you would pick the amount to save and then made payments to this free account so you would have money to buy Christmas gifts for friends and family. This club was open to adults and minors and many a Christmas was funded by this club. Hope I made sense - more like a savings account that you could only receive during the month of December. Amazingly Resilient!Despite the crushing poverty this family had to endure, the little girl's dress may be dirty but her face is clean, and her smile is both endearing and hopeful. I am amazed how someone (probably her mom) cut the newpaper over the window into the shape and resemblance of what I believe is called a "valance" over the window. How brave, resilient, and resourceful these people were. Amazing Americans! Aviator HelmetThe little girl must have a brother. As poor as they seem to be the little feller managed to snag a new one. I always get a kick seeing kids wear those in the movies and in photos. There's nothing like an ornery looking kid in goggles, I laugh out loud every time. Bike Helmet?Is that some early motorized bike helmet hanging on the wall? I have to wonder too if the girl would be reading the newspapers and wonder what a "Christmas Club" was. AmazingThe valence above the window is amazing! And think that today someone out in the Hamptons is paying an interior decorator big bucks for a reproduction print wallpaper similar to this for a powder-room! Fox TroubleIt would appear that Mr. Fox has earned himself the unwelcome attention of the farmer. Looks like a nice, well used fox trap hanging there. Worker housing?Bagnell Dam, which created the Lake of the Ozarks, was finished in 1931, and the lake filled up in less than 2 years (per Wikipedia). So apparently this cabin wasn't bought because it would be in the flooded area - maybe it was housing for one of the construction crew, and he just kept living there later? (The dam for the big lake to the west, Truman Lake, didn't start construction until 1964.) (The Gallery, Carl Mydans, Kids, Kitchens etc.)
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