As Steinbeck readers will recall, Al Joad picked a 1926 Hudson Super Six from the jalopy lot to make into a truck to haul the family to the Promised Land, because it was a popular model and the junkyards would have plenty of spare parts.

The car second from the left is a 1925 Hudson Super Six Coach, which was the company's most popular body style. This particular car is of the second series with a new modified body introduced in March of that year, and sold for $1,250. Due to increasing sales volume, by October the price had been reduced to $1,165. Hudson was the world's largest builder of six cylinder cars, and the #3 automaker in the U.S. in 1925. Thanks Shorpy! You continue to be the best place on the web to see original vintage photos of Hudson automobiles!

1BR condos in the building are going for $90k to $200k.

http://www.trulia.com/property/1081317735-4120-14th-St-Nw-45-Washington-...

"What cost $67.50 in 1925 would cost $822.46 in 2008." according to the Inflation Calculator.

Interesting to compare the original photo with the Google Street View. The tree in the middle doesn't seem to have survived (there is a small tree in its place in the present day), although the two on either end of the building appear to be flourishing.

Judging by the for-sale signs posted out front, it looks like the building has gone condo (and I would wager to say that condos in a prewar building in NW DC go for a pretty penny these days).

I used Street View to go around the corner and look down the back of the building, and it does appear that there are structures that come closer to approaching actual porches than what's on the front, although they're still pretty tiny.

Washington Post, Feb 7, 1926

New Apartments in Northwest

New four-story, tapestry brick apartment structure at Fourteenth and Upshur streets northwest, which is just receiving its finishing touches. The building was designed by W.R. Lamar and contains 40 housekeeping apartments of three and four rooms, some with porches. W.H. West Co. are the exclusive agents.

$72.50 a month in 1925? That was a small fortune for people who were making maybe a dollar or two a day. I remember we lived in a small three bedroom flat in the fifties and my parents paid $30 a month in rent. My mom talked about when she and my dad married in the early thirties and lived in a fancy furnished apartment in a tony part of town that went for $16 a month. And that was a lot of money during the Depression.

Convergence of parallel lines is common in building photos today. The use of a view camera, with its adjustable front and back planes is almost a lost art. How many people today know what rise & fall, swing, tilt, and shift controls are? Specifically, rise of the front lens plane in a view camera makes architectural photos powerful. Compare this Cedric photo to the ugly distortion you will see on Google Street View.

"Some with shelves," they should say, if the real porches aren't around back.

In the recently posted pictures of DC, the sidewalks are 3-squares across and appear, like this example, to be intact today. Is this due to a more temperate climate than I am used to in Michigan or is it better engineering and workmanship?

Not the most exciting building ever, but, since it's still here, well suited to its purpose and well constructed as well!

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