December 22, 1924. "J.E. Hoover, Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice." A young J. Edgar Hoover, age 29, director of the government agency that we know today as the FBI. National Photo glass negative. View full size.

November 1909. The 25th annual National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York, in one of those ultra-detailed yet otherworldly views so characteristic of large-format glass negatives (8x10 inches here). View full size.

April 1909. Anthony, Rhode Island. "One of the young spinners in the Quidwick Co. Mill. A Polish boy, Willie, who was taking his noon rest in a doffer-box." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

1864. "Chattanooga, Tenn. Confederate prisoners at railroad depot waiting to be sent north." Wet plate glass negative, photographer unknown. View full size.

Washington, D.C. "Kendrick-Harrison Furniture Co. window." Next door to this slightly spooky circa 1922 display of Heywood-Wakefield baby carriages is a palm reader. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

November 1912. "For Child Welfare Exhibit 1912-13. Whitman Street dump, Pawtucket, Rhode Island." Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

1922. "Surgery #12." Another selection from the "surgery" series of images, this one showing an anesthesiologist administering nitrous oxide prior to the operation. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

"Hotel St. George, Brooklyn, circa 1905." Plus a ghost or two in this time exposure of the hotel's Clark Street facades. This Brooklyn Heights landmark, which by the 1930s was New York's largest hotel, with 2,632 rooms in a complex of buildings spread over a block, started with the 10-story dark brick structure, completed in 1885. After more than a century, it was destroyed by fire in 1995. The adjoining white building with the flagpoles, designed by Montrose Morris in the 1890s, still stands. Detroit Publishing Co. glass negative. View full size.