Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
November 1938. "Loan companies on lower Douglas Street. Omaha, Nebraska." Photo by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
These days, I rarely see a pawnshop that doesn't have bars on the windows. Evidently they were in more respectable neighborhoods back in the day.
This was back in the days when you could find a real guitar treasure in a pawn shop. Even up to the early '60s you could find vintage Gibsons and Martins for next to nothing. But then the folk-music boom happened and they were all gone, snatched up for bargain-basement prices before the hock shop owners understood what they had.
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5