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April 1937. "Old man on the street in Shawneetown, Illinois." Cornering the market. Medium-format nitrate negative by Russell Lee. View full size.
This is the Posey building, which stood on the SW corner of Main and Washington, now an empty lot, like much of old Shawneetown. It housed a Kroger store, and I think the Gallatin Democrat newspaper on the second floor.
On the NW corner of Main and Washington is the old court house, built circa 1840 and one of the few old downtown buildings still standing. It's an Illinois state historic site, but is shuttered and rotting on the inside.
There's quite a few other shots of Shawneetown by Lee, who was there to document the effects of the great Ohio River flood of 1937.
And it appears there's a Shell gas station across the street, thanks to the reflection, bringing this somewhat undated image squarely into the middle of the 20th Century.
When I was a kid, we could get canned goods for a nickel. A nickel!
I hope you're not walkin' too close to those downspouts in a heavy rain. Just the right height.
Or else it's seen a lot of sill sitting, it conforms nicely to the human posterior.
He was about to witness a lot of local change: Shawneetown was flooded (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River_flood_of_1937) a few months before the photo was taken, and the entire town was moved to "New Shawneetown" a couple of miles up the hill.
He looks like he is in his 70s. That would put his birth at the end of the Civil War. The transcontinental railroad, the development of paved roads, the invention of internal combustion engines and air travel happened during his lifetime. His horizon went far beyond that of his father.
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