4000+ fine-art prints suitable for framing. Desk-size to sofa-size and larger, on archival paper or canvas.
The Shorpy Gallery
Join and Share
Social Shorpy
To love him is to like him. Our goal: 100k "likes":
Recent comments
- Holy i-ball Batman!
- In the heat of the day
- Many lost summers ago
- Darned lei!
- At first glance,
- The checkboard
- A matter of economy.
- Some buildings still there
- The Lost Weekend
- A short beer ?
- Almost the Buddy System
- Switches? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Switches
- Incredib-El
- Great place
- Answer me this
- Last Ride
- Which way?
- A great safety technique
- It took me a while- -
- New Yorkers losing their "El"
- Swiss miss
- Oh, the wonders of technology!
- Signs and Signals
- Alan Brady
- Cool, Clear Water
- She never dreamed
- Flynn's has flown
- Riveting -
- Brand preference
- A Note of Whimsy
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
Corps de Ballet: 1912
Submitted by Dave on Sun, 07/22/2012 - 2:44pm.
Tags:
"Photos taken during noon hour, October 23rd, 1912, at the Loray Mills, Gastonia, N.C. They said they were working and went in to work. At night I counted over thirty children coming out when the whistle blew, and they seemed to be from ten to twelve years old. The Superintendent was much disturbed over the photos." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.
Bryharms is right.
Submitted by Otis R. Needleman on Mon, 07/23/2012 - 8:42pm.
Those pitiful cloth wrappings were better than nothing, but not much. Wonder why the barefoot boys haven't done the same.
Gastonia Ballet Company
Submitted by bryharms on Mon, 07/23/2012 - 2:57pm.
Seriously, those are NOT ballet shoes and I am certain that, even back in 1912, no boy would be caught dead in his sister's ballet shoes!
They're make-shift shoes for boys without proper shoes, but whose mother insisted they still needed some sort of protection. They're made from remnant cloth. Don't ask me how I know!
Can't for the life of me
Submitted by Don Struke on Mon, 07/23/2012 - 3:49am.
Been trying to come up with some logical reason for those ballet shoes. All I can figure is maybe they found them somewhere or, considering both boys have socks, that indicates (CSI Donno here) they were wearing the ballet foot garb when they left home, having donned socks but without regular shoes to wear. If they found the shoes at work, most likely they'd have been barefoot. I hope other Shorponians will chime in.
Both pairs are so beat up I doubt if there were any sisters at home ticked off about their ballet shoes taking a walk (sorry).
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 | © 2013 Shorpy Inc.
Today's Top 5