Another view of the Primadora cigar shop, with a lunchroom, furrier, carpenter and men's clothier as neighbors. View full size. Geo. Grantham Bain Collection.

Another view of the Waldman's music store in Manhattan from 1921, showing records, listening booths and Victrolas. The inscription on the negative also says "N.Y. B'd Inst. Co." View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.

The Owens & Beers record shop at 81 Chambers Street in New York circa 1915-1920. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

Waldman's music store in New York, May 1921. A nice selection of records and Victrolas, with Nipper keeping an eye on things. Does anyone know where this was? View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

April 1941. "Sign outside of church in the Black Belt, Chicago." View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam, Farm Security Administration.

April 1941. Storefront church and adjacent lunch wagon in the Chicago Black Belt. View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam.

Chicago street scene, April 1941. Papers littering the sidewalk are "policy slips." ["Policy" was a lottery gambling system once common in some black communities.] View full size. 35mm nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam.

January 1938. Agricultural workers on a sugar plantation near Ponce, Puerto Rico. 2.25 inch nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.

January 1938. "Train loaded with cane on a sugar plantation near Ponce, Puerto Rico." Nitrate negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.

Another bird's-eye view of Eleventh Avenue, a.k.a "Death Avenue," on New York's West Side as captured by the Bain News Service circa 1911. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

Equestrian signalman on the New York Central's Eleventh Avenue freight line circa 1911. In a 1930 article on the West Side tracks' demise, the New York Times wrote of the "eight men and twenty-four horses comprising the famous 'cowboy troop' [or 'West Side Cowboys'] whose function it has been for years to ride ahead of the puffing locomotives as they wheeled along Death Avenue." The dangerous street-level tracks were eventually replaced by a 1½-mile viaduct, the High Line, that after decades of abandonment is being turned into a long, thin elevated park. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

W.T. Grant department store fire at New York's Sixth Avenue and 18th Street in April 1916. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.

Mounted flagman and freight. Another circa 1911 view of the Eleventh Avenue rail line in New York near West 26th Street. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection. The light spot at the top is from deterioration of the emulsion.

A detailed circa 1910 Manhattan streetscape of rail cars at West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue, known as "Death Avenue" for the many pedestrians killed along the New York Central's freight line there. View full size. Removal of the street-level tracks commenced on December 31, 1929. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. Update: Click here for the largest version.

New York's First Avenue at East 29th Street during the annual Little Italy festa circa 1908. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.