A crumpled glider destroyed by the wind on Hill of the Wreck in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The hill was named after a shipwreck, not the fate of the glider. Photograph by either Orville or Wilbur Wright, Oct. 10, 1900. View full size.

A city in ruins. Boston, Massachusetts, after the great fire of November 9-10, 1872. View full size. Albumen print by Joshua Smith. Wikipedia link.

A city in ruins. Boston, Massachusetts, after the great fire of November 9-10, 1872. View full size. Albumen print by Joshua Smith. Wikipedia link.

January 1909. Augusta, Georgia. Charlie Lambert, 15, has been in textile mill work eight years. Went into Granby mill in Columbia, South Carolina, at 7 years old. View full size. Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

In what we hope will be an annual tradition, we're pleased to open the season on the Shorpy/Plan59 Holiday Print, made at Juniper Gallery in Fairfax, Virginia, from an original 1938 painting by noted Fortune magazine illustrator Antonio Petruccelli that we purchased at auction last fall in New York. The prints, struck on French art paper with archival inks, are very detailed and quite beautiful.
View full size | View even larger. For more information click here.

Winter of 1861-1862. Federal cavalry at Sudley Ford, Virginia, following the battle of First Bull Run (July 1861). View full size. Half of a glass-plate stereograph pair taken by George N. Barnard and compiled by Milhollen and Mugridge.

For a slight change of pace, here's a 35mm Kodachrome taken by my grandmother on a sailing trip around the Bahamas in 1949. View full size.

Extracted sulfur stacked in a "vat" 60 feet tall at Freeport Sulphur Co. in Hoskins Mound, Texas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon.

May 1943. Sixty-foot-tall sulfur vat at the Freeport Sulphur Co. in Hoskins Mound, Texas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon.

1914. Dr. Charles Campbell and a "municipal bat-roost" in San Antonio, Texas ("for one of man's best friends"), his idea for mosquito control at a time when malaria was a major public health problem in the U.S. Disguised as a favorite bat habitat — a church steeple, complete with cross — the roost was fitted with a trapdoor and stilts to facilitate the harvesting of guano by the wagonload for use as fertilizer. 5x7 glass negative, Bain News Service. View full size.

April 1943. Schoolchildren in San Augustine County, Texas. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon, Office of War Information. View full size.

1864. "View from the Capitol at Nashville, Tennessee." Wet collodion glass-plate stereograph negative by George N. Barnard. View full size.

1864. Union Army soldier at Confederate fortifications outside of Atlanta. Wet collodion glass-plate negative by George N. Barnard. View full size.

January 1909. Two of the "helpers" in the Tifton Cotton Mill at Tifton, Georgia. They work regularly. View full size. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

June 1911. Ethel Shumate. Has been rolling cigarettes in Danville (Virginia) factory for six months. Lives at 614 Upper Street. Said she was 13 years old, but it is doubtful. View full size. Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.