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.

July 1938. Back alley showing housing conditions in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the FSA.
After all these years, I've just figured out, by virtue of this photo, the purpose of the shed-like area in our Philadelphia home. Beneath the shed was what we called a bunker, a 4 x 4 concrete encased tunnel that ran the width of the shed. I'll assume this was a storage area. Ugh.
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