Join and Share
Social Shorpy
To love him is to like him. Our goal: 100k "likes":
Recent comments
- Expert Mechanics
- Interesting architexture
- Small world
- Drive upgrade
- Laissez Faire
- The Gaffer
- Where Dr. C.S. Bok lived
- Railings, War, and Admiral Halsey
- electric drive
- Well Built
- Is that an eggplant?
- Character shoes
- I could be wrong about the location
- The view today
- The shade of things to come
- Eeww
- Is she the chaperone?
- Solid Mausoleum
- The car in the photo
- Wish I'd done this
- Great Photo
- Top View
- Fenders vs. Guards
- What, pray tell...
- So tempting!
- Guard railings..
- Nothing against the 1920's, but--
- Propeller Guards
- Andrew Anselmo
- Re: Okay Navy Guys
Member Photos
Photos submitted by Shorpy members.
Colorized Photos
Colorized photos submitted by members.
About the Photos
Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
Image Galleries
Search Shorpy
Today's Top 5
The Shorpy Store!
Big Box: 1906
Submitted by Dave on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 12:12pm.
Tags:
Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1906. "Columbia Building, Fourth and Main." An interesting look at the gritty environment of the urban horse. And maybe a record for the number of insulators on one tree in a Shorpy photo. View full size.
Look at all those windows!
Submitted by Plymouthfan on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 10:33pm.
I imagine the owners of this property employed their own full time sign painter to letter each window and most likely all the interior doors throughout this huge building. Great work and not an easy task.
Perspective
Submitted by 993Dave on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 5:51pm.
What a great picture for teaching the principles of perspective and vanishing points. All those straight lines ...
Top floor wiring
Submitted by Maniak Productions on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 4:57pm.
Note the lines running up to that little crossarm on the top floor. Oh to be a lineman back then.
1890-1966
Submitted by DAlison on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 4:48pm.
Built 1890, razed 1966, replaced with BB&T Bldg, 1972.
L H & St. L
Submitted by Talitha Clementine on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 4:27pm.
That would be the Louisville, Henderson and Saint Louis Railroad, I do believe, though it's difficult to imagine why they would want their top-floor view blocked with their own initials.
Thomas Dufficy
Submitted by lshadoff on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 3:52pm.
Thomas Dufficy, Thomas Dufficy & Co., 512 W. Main, St. Louis, Died 1911.
Windows 06
Submitted by RoccoB on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 2:07pm.
Can someone explain why the businesses on the upper floors would paint the name of their company on the windows? Seems to me you'd have to be standing inside an equally tall building across the street or a bird in order to actually see these glass lettered signs.
[The building is on a hill, so whatever is up there would be visible from quite a distance. - Dave]
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
RSS | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Photo Use | © 2012 Shorpy Inc.
Today's Top 5