August 1908. "Noon hour in an Indianapolis tomato cannery. Young fellows in front of boxcar." Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

June 1943. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Miss Natalie O'Donald, service-station attendant at the Atlantic Refining Company garages." Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.

        The Bureau of War Risk Insurance, a World War I agency that over the past century morphed into the Department of Veterans Affairs, which still occupies this building. Plus ça change ...

Washington, D.C., 1923. "War Risk Bureau, Vermont Avenue and I Street N.W." 8x10 inch glass negative, National Photo Company Collection. View full size.

July 1918. "Alex, a 14-year-old working boy in St. Etienne, France, was found intently studying the playground model at the Children's Welfare Exhibit of the American Red Cross. He has been working since 11 years of age, and said: 'On account of the high cost of living, I now get four and a half francs a day'." 5x7 inch glass negative by Lewis Wickes Hine for the American Red Cross. View full size.

1906. "Memphis Trust Building, Main Street." Completed 1904, and then doubled in width 10 years later. Now an apartment building. View full size.

1906. "City Hall -- Vicksburg, Mississippi." The building still stands, although the angels have flown. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative. View full size.

June 1943. "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Miss Natalie O'Donald, service station attendant at an Atlantic Refining Company garage." Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.

Washington, D.C., circa 1923. "Union Station." You'll come for the trains but stay for the sculpture. National Photo Company glass negative. View full size.

June 1923. Washington, D.C. "Aloha Band at Bureau of Engraving and Printing." Welcoming the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (AAONMS) during the Shriners convention, with a portrait of President Warren Harding, noted Mason (who would be dead by August), over the entrance. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

San Francisco, 1918. "Buick Model 46 four-passenger touring coupe at de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park." 5x7 glass negative by Chris Helin. View full size.

April 1958. "Hubert Leslie, human guinea pig for medical experiments (also an artist known as 'Hube the Cube'), one of the 'Beatnik' community of San Francis­co's North Beach district." 35mm negative from photos by Cal Bernstein for the Look magazine article "The Bored, the Bearded and the Beat." View full size.

August 1943. Southfields, New York. "Interracial activities at camp Nathan Hale, where children are aided by the Methodist Camp Service. First aid." Photo by Gordon Parks for the Office of War Information. View full size.

Manhattan circa 1909. "New Pennsylvania Station, New York, N.Y." The Beaux-Arts behemoth whose demolition in 1963 lit a fire under the nation's armchair architects. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative. View full size.

Detroit, 1907. "Hotel Pontchartrain under construction." The 10-story, 298-room "Pontch," after expanding up with a five-story addition completed in 1910, came back down in 1920 at the tender age of 13, demolished to make way for an office tower. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

July 1943. Washington, D.C. "A child whose home is an alley dwelling near the U.S. Capitol." Photo by Esther Bubley, Office of War Information. View full size.