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:

Tuskegee airmen exiting the parachute room at Ramitelli, Italy. March 1945. From left: Richard S. "Rip" Harder, Brooklyn, Class 44-B; unidentified airman; Thurston L. Gaines Jr., Freeport, N.Y., Class 44-G; Newman C. Golden, Cincinnati, Class 44-G; Wendell M. Lucas, Fairmont Heights, Maryland, Class 44-E. View full size. Photograph by Toni Frissell.

The Park Row Building circa 1912. View full size. For nine years this 1899 tower, at 391 feet, was the tallest in New York. Read more here and here.

November 29, 1908. Boys working in the Eureka Cotton Mills at Chester, South Carolina. Rob Dover (tallest boy) has been in mill eight or nine years. Melvin Reilly (middle) in mill one year. Boyd McKowan is about 15 years old. Been in mill five years. Witness Sara R. Hine. View full size. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

November 30, 1908. School in Lancaster, South Carolina, attended by children who work in the cotton mills. Enrollment 163. Attendance, usually about 100. These are all that attend out of the 1,000 employed at the mill. View full size. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View even larger.

Visitors at Marshall Hall, 1893. View full size. Photo by William Cruikshank. Marshall Hall, an estate and ferry stop across the Potomac from Mount Vernon, was a popular picnic and concert destination for day-trippers from Washington.

15-year-old sweeper in the spinning and spooling room of Berkshire Cotton Mills. Adams, Massachusetts. July 10, 1916. View full size. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Santa Fe freight about to leave for the West Coast from the Corwith Yard at Chicago. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. This is the freight Jack accompanied from Chicago to California in March 1943, taking many pictures along the way for the Office of War Information.