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
- Role reversal
- Hot metal to cold type
- Had them at Lane Tech in 1980
- Re: etaoin shrdlu
- I had to learn to use one of these
- The Gnarly Cottonwood
- A vanished brand
- The extra doors
- What impressive machines
- Over the shoulder horn.
- The Wild West
- Lemonolyuf
- Fill the pointy thing with sand
- Hugh Hefner
- An otherworldly appearance
- Read any magazines?
- Sweater Girl
- Party of six
- Interesting Comment
- She Gives
- Missing?
- Hefty
- High School Confidential
- Fast forward 50 years
- Dutch Oven
- The Spitoon
- etaoin shrdlu
- Is that all?
- A Hallowed Mess (Hall)
- Lead mule for the yearbook
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
A Lodging House Christmas
Submitted by Dave on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 7:36am.
Christmas tree at a New York lodging house in 1914. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. What did Santa bring? Chairs!
Lodging Houses
Submitted by Elsewhere's Daughgter on Tue, 12/18/2007 - 3:26pm.
These were shelters for the homeless.
[According to Wikipedia, lodging house is a synonym for boarding house or rooming house. i.e. a place where you can rent a room. - Dave]
So why are these children here?
Submitted by shefindsu on Mon, 12/17/2007 - 2:24am.
Are they orphans? Why are they in a lodge?
[They're in a lodging house. Rooms where they live with their parents. - Dave]
Children's faces
Submitted by SandyW on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 3:16pm.
Wonderful photo! Great kids and the woman in the foreground looks doting and proud of whichever one is hers.
Their faces might seem "dirty" because they are actually chapped. (Even in the cleaned up version, their faces seem to have something on them.)I never realized how easy it was for this to happen until I lived for a while in a cold place among people who had no easy access to warm water and no skin lotion or mild soap. The children all had constant runny noses and chapped cheeks.
Also, I think there was a difference between "boarding house" and "lodging house," which is what the original label on the side says. One got meals in a boarding house ("room and board") but not in a lodging house.
[Thanks. I will change the title. - Dave]
Santa Should've Brought Soap!
Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 11:07am.
Yowsers! Those are some dirty kids! Love this photo though - the 2 girls standing at center are adorable.
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