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.
Vintage photos of:

New York, 1920. Exchange Court Building at 52 Broadway and Exchange Place. View full size. Photograph by Irving Underhill. Completed in 1898, the structure was rebuilt with additional floors and a modern facade in 1980-82.

New York, 1908. Hudson Terminal Buildings at 30-50 Church Street showing cemetery and construction of elevated railway. View full size. Irving Underhill photo. The complex was razed in 1971 to make way for 5 World Trade Center.

New York, 1916. Heckscher Building at 50 East 42nd Street and Madison Avenue. View full size. Irving Underhill photo. The building, which still stands, used to have a squash court on the 23rd floor. Nowadays it's dwarfed by its neighbors.

New York, 1921. Equitable Trust Building and Hotel Biltmore. View full size. Photograph by Irving Underhill.

Bodie, California, July 1962. Odd Fellows Hall and Miners Union Hall on Main Street looking north. View full size. Photograph by Ronald Partridge, Historic American Buildings Survey. Bodie, a mining camp ghost town on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada between Yosemite and Tahoe, is now a state historic park.

Vault of the Bodie Bank, July 1962. Mono County, California. View full size. Photograph by Ronald Partridge, Historic American Buildings Survey.

"Blind children playing hide-and-seek among arcade pillars" at the Overbrook School in Philadelphia ca. 1912. View full size. Geo. Grantham Bain Collection.