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.

Ayer Mill clock tower, Lawrence, Massachusetts. January 1941. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.
De Chirico, indeed. The photographers on these pages were not only technically knowledgeable, but were real artists.
I've known about well-known names like Walker Evans for ages, but Delano is a pleasant discovery for me.
are those old wooden bodied box cars of the now defunct New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad sitting on the company's siding.
Many of these old time railroad cars were still in use well into the 1960's.
"The New Haven", as it was commonly known, spent a good portion of its more than century of existence in derelict bankruptcy and trusteeship.
Keeping equipment in good shape, other than motive power,
was often something that was sacrificed in the name of financial savings.
The New Haven was also a target of corporate takeovers and such by people like tycoon J.P. Morgan.
I would love to know the history of that old passenger/baggage "combine" car sitting in the foreground. It is also of wooden bodied construction with open platforms and vestibules. At this point in its life, it seems to have been downgraded to a "boarding car", "maintenance-of-way" or work equipment. This was the fate that many old railroad passenger cars met before they were eventually retired or scrapped.
I have a request how about some steel mill photos? If anyone has any please post.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
Throw a pink pig up near that smoke stack and you've got a Pink Floyd album cover...
Coming from the Northeast, it's interesting to see the mills when they were actually in use as opposed to their current states of disrepair or hip, urban renewal.
great blog, by the way.
Paging Giorgio de Chirico ...
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