Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Vintage photos of:
1916. "Woman's National Service School, under woman's section, Navy League. Mrs. Slater and Miss Moore." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.
Circa 1922, another entry in the "Surgery" series, this one pre-op. The laundry mark on the towel says "Vets Hospital No. 11 (or maybe 17) Washington D.C." National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.
Bowling alley circa 1956. Next door: Fine dining at the Thruway Restaurant. Color transparency by Dmitri Kessel, Life magazine photo archive. View full size.
From a set of Kodaslide transparencies found in a mailer postmarked 8/12/40; rate was 1½ cents from Rochester, NY (developed by Kodak) to Paul Smiths, NY. The rest of the set is here. View full size.
Washington, 1916. "Horse shows. Ralph Coffin jumping his horse over Sylvanus Stokes's Rolls-Royce on Rabbit." Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.
Washington circa 1916. "Fairview Hotel, 1st Street and Florida Avenue." The proprietor is former slave and "colored philosopher" Keith Sutherland. See the comments below for more on him. Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.
1915. "Mrs. William Gibbs McAdoo, nee Eleanor Wilson. Baby McAdoo's open-air bed." The infant with the precarious perch was Ellen McAdoo, born in 1915 to Woodrow Wilson's daughter and Treasury Secretary William McAdoo. At the age of 31 she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. View full size.
"Wall Street bomb." Aftermath of the explosion that killed dozens of people in New York's financial district on September 16, 1920, when a horse wagon loaded with dynamite and iron sash weights blew up in front of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street. The attack, which was attributed to Italian anarchists, was never solved. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.