Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Vintage photos of:
New York circa 1919. "Cripples at baseball." Victor Cassiere at left. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
March 23, 1913. New York. "Easter Sunday, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street." 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
November 24, 1983. Nineteen years after this previous shot our kitchen is still more or less salmon and my mother's 1955-vintage O'Keefe & Merritt range is still doing yeoman service, in this case having just disgorged the turkey, which my father is carving, while Mother herself makes the gravy. I can still almost smell it. Scanned from my 35mm Kodak Vericolor negative. View full size.
June 6, 1950. "Vis-O-Matic department store," a premonition of virtual retailing. One of at least 200 photographs taken by Bernard Hoffman at retail magnate Laurence Freiman's newfangled catalog store in Pembroke, Ontario. The cards were an index of merchandise on color slides viewed by customers on rear-projection screens. Life magazine image archive. View full size.
November 17, 1921. "Harding turkey." A present for President Warren Harding arrives at the White House. G.G. Bain Collection glass negative. View full size.
November 1911. "Thanksgiving maskers." A door-to-door ritual for kids in costume back when Thanksgiving was a kind of proto-Halloween. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
November 20, 1920. "White House Turkey." Alternate title: Coop d'Etat. With l'etat being Texas.National Photo Co. Collection glass negative. View full size.
October 7, 1922. Washington, D.C. "Auto accident, 13th and S." If you don't like my driving, get off the sidewalk! National Photo glass negative. View full size.