Washington, 1924. "Helen G. Sweeney, Adolph Busch, Joseph Gallegher, Henry Glyn." Helen, who as Miss Washington represented the District of Columbia in the 1924 Miss America pageant, was also Miss Treasury Department that year. She's shown here in front of the Treasury building in a nautical-themed car bearing the insignias of Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser, promoting the company's beverages during the Prohibition years. National Photo glass negative. View full size.

August 2, 1926. "Miss Marjorie Joesting." Our second look at Marjorie, who was Miss Washington, D.C., and a Miss America runner-up at Atlantic City. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

October 15, 1912. "White House Hotel." The building at 156 Canal Street, New York, where John F. Schrank lived prior to his attempted assassination of Teddy Roosevelt the day before. Bain Collection glass negative. View full size.

Brooklyn, N.Y., circa 1910. "Atlantic Avenue subway entrance." Plus an elevated railway and streetcar tracks. Detroit Publishing glass negative. View full size.

1909. "Consul Peter smoking." Peter, "famous monkey of the Parisian music halls," was an act at Oscar Hammerstein's Paradise Roof Garden in New York. As the subject of "Consul Crosses the Atlantic," he was also perhaps the first chimp movie star. George Grantham Bain Collection glass negative. View full size.

Here's my mother's drapes and curtains again, not to mention my mother, along with me and my father. I didn't get decked out like that for an ordinary Sunday, so this has to be some special occasion. Mother's all dolled up, but the fancy apron and the condensation on the window point to a major cooking operation going on in the kitchen. All the relatives are probably coming over. Her African violets are cooperating by not only being alive, but blooming. Appropriately enough, there's a Saturday Evening Post in the magazine rack, and, good California family that we are, a Sunset. The only mystery is the yardstick on the floor under the chair. An Ansco Color slide by my brother. Phantom images from the desk lamp must mean he had a couple misfires before the flash went off. View full size.

An uncaptioned circa 1915 glass negative taken outside a Victrola "talking machine" store in Washington, D.C. Harris & Ewing Collection. View full size.