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The Tenement: 1905
Circa 1905. "New York tenement." With a number of tiny inhabitants in evidence. Dry plate glass ... bottles and other such items on the dressing table. This tenement dweller did not leave home unadorned! Photo on shelf Looks like a National Guard Company group photo Not your typical tenement While we can't quite see through the window to the left of the oval ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/23/2012 - 3:40pm -

Circa 1905. "New York tenement." With a number of tiny inhabitants in evidence. Dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Typical catWon't hold still for a photo!
Lord of the FliesSee the little black kitten in front of the stove? Hopefully he (she?) won't get a paw in either of the two sheets of flypaper, one on each table. Plenty of flies to keep Kitty entertained. 
The dressing tableNotice the hat pins, scent bottles and other such items on the dressing table. This tenement dweller did not leave home unadorned!
Photo on shelfLooks like a National Guard Company group photo
Not your typical tenementWhile we can't quite see through the window to the left of the oval bedroom mirror, it is evident from the amount of sunlight coming through that the window opens to the outside.  It's a sign that this tenement is of higher quality (and rent) than most.  Tenement bedroom windows usually opened onto narrow airshafts that admitted dim light and very little fresh air.
Also, many tenement dwellers in 1910 would have been first-generation immigrants, mostly from southern or eastern Europe.  If immigrants, the occupants of this tenement are at least knowledgeable enough in English to be reading an English-language newspaper.  Again, if they're immigrants at all: the picture of soldiers looks like it could have been from the American Civil War, more than a generation in the past when this picture was taken.
Basement catThe first known photo of Basement Cat emerging from the shadows.
Tenement 1910Million-dollar condo 2010.
Evening JournalThe New York Evening Journal was a daily (except Sunday) published by William Randolph Hearst from 1897 to 1909.  The paper was sold in 1909 and ceased publication in 1911.
Tenement MuseumIf any Shorpsters find themselves in NYC, they can visit the Tenement Museum and see a re-creation of a tenement much like this one.  It is a fascinating place with, yes, some old photographs.  It is on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side.
RemodelThe disk high on the wall is a decorative cover used to plug an opening where an old flue pipe went through the wall, probably from a coal stove. Judging from the matching cover in the bedroom, the flue went horizontal for a while before heading up and out. The cover had spring clips on the back that snapped into the circular opening. 
Anyone make out what's in the mirror?
Location, Location, LocationThe photo doesn't let us know where in NYC it is. 1910 tenements usually conjure an image of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood of immigrants. In this picture, which could be in Midtown, Yorkville or  the Upper West Side or even Harlem, we have reasonable living quarters for 1910. The newspaper on the table appears to be in English.  One picture on the wall show a Military unit, possibly a  Spanish-American or Civil War Unit that a resident or relative served in. A tenement building was and is a way of life in many American Cities. Many remain in the poorer neighborhoods today, however the very upscale Upper East Side of Manhattan has  them on almost every block east of Madison Avenue. A few are run down, but most are well kept and the monthly rents, where they are not controlled, are in the multiple thousands. The vacancy rate is around 1%.
IronIt is faint in the photo, but it appears there is a flatiron leaning against the baseboard behind the corner of the stove. 
What is it?Can anyone tell me what the woven wooden object is that in propped up on the wall shelf?
[A fan. - Dave]
Home Sweet HomeAs somebody who lives in a 274-square-foot tenement from 1871 in the West Village, I find this photo wonderfully revealing. My home as been updated (in 1934), but still retains a lot of quirks. This shot is such a wonderful view into the personal lives of folks that lived in homes like my own. I can only imagine how warm the home must have been in the summertime with the cast iron stove and gas lighting.
More photos like this please!
The Evening Journal revisitedSince the old New York Journal-American was my late father's favorite newspaper, I'm going to have to quibble with Old Molly's history of the New York Evening Journal. The history account I found has William Randolph Hearst publishing both the morning American and the Evening Journal in New York from 1895 until they were combined in 1937 into the afternoon Journal-American, which continued as a Hearst publication until 1966, when it was merged with the old World-Telegram and Sun and the Herald-Tribune into the very short-lived World-Journal-Tribune.
Love the Rohrshach tableclothNot about to divulge the things which popped into my imagination by that design along the bottom edge. Okay, one. I see a bearded gent with spectacles peering through an arbor.
Another thought came to mind while examining the photos in the room. Which was the chance we just might come across a Shorpy photo hanging on the wall in another Shorpy photo. I'm too old to use the phrase "that would be so cool," but that would be apt. 
Quibble acceptedOld Molly agrees with the Tipster and stands corrected. Through mergers and various name changes, the paper survived until relatively recent years. 
Yarn swift The thing reflected in the mirror appears to be a yarn swift, or winder. The bag would be used to store it.
Those are definitely flatirons (or, as they are known down here in the South, "sad irons," as it was a sad day when you had to use them because no matter the weather a lot of heat was involved).
 Great photo with lots of history which is somewhat lost except in museums or as one contributor pointed out a Tenement tour in New York.
Stove Update A little Google research indicates my earlier thought the stove was a conversion may have been wrong. The Gem City Stove Company in Dayton, Ohio, produced a gas stove from the late 1800s up until the Depression known as the "Perfect."
Boat modelTo the left of the doorway is a half-model of a boat hull with a centerboard. It's a technical rather than a decorative object and makes me suspect that someone in the tenement was a boatbuilder.
It's definitely a well kept room and a superior tenement, but I bet that on a hot day it SMELLED. 
Basement CatI often wondered where Basement Cat got his start. Now I know. (I wonder if anyone else got that).
Lewis Hinemust think everyone lives a wealthy life.  This apartment looks clean and lovingly "decorated" to the best of the tenants' ability.  I don't think it is all that bad!!
[Perhaps, but this is not a Lewis Hine photo. And did anyone say it was bad? - Dave]
The Gift of the MagiI have never felt closer to O. Henry than at this moment.
Flash of memorywhen I noticed the wooden match holder next to the stove! Haven't seen one of those in a kitchen since the '50s.
What are those pipes for?Does anyone know what use the pipes from above have? They might be a fire suppressant, but I am not sure.
[The "pipes" are gas light fixtures. - Dave]
Tenement DefinedIt's a little puzzling how the word "tenement" came to imply poverty or deprivation. I suppose the constant association by Lewis Hine and others of the word to their photographs of dire poverty would do the trick.
Technically, the word tenement, as defined by New York City anyway, means any building that houses three or more unrelated families. The doorman buildings on Park Avenue are, by strict definition, tenements as well.
GaslightDid one have to climb a ladder or stand on a high chair whenever they wanted to light the gas jets?
PerfectI actually have an ad for this very oven - posted in a Dayton publication from 1904.
It was placed by the Dayton Gas Light and Coke Company.
COKE COKE COKE
SMOKELESS FUEL
Recommended by all Range and Furnace Manufacturers as being the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable fuel.
Orders received at the Dayton Gas Light and Coke Co's Office
etc. etc.
Try and visitGeezerNYC submitted the comment that shorpsters can visit the Tenement Museum in NYC and see a recreation. In fact,you can enjoy an in depth online recreation and 360 degree walkthroughs of these wonderful tenements at http://www.tenement.org
The site is dedicated to the stories of immigrants who lived in 97 Orchard Street, a tenement built in 1863 on Manhattan's Lower East Side. There are TONS of picture archives, a virtual tour, collections, first hand accounts of several families that lived there and LOTS more. I've visited it several times and I love it every time. I'm sure it is NOTHING like taking an actual walking tour of the tenement museum but it's as close as I can get for now. I suggest that everyone check this out. I'd also like to say that the comment such as how it had to have "smelled" in the heat of summer, etc. just bummed me out. So it may have smelled. so what. Many of these people struggled and busted their rear ends like no tomorrow just to get bread on the table and clean clothing to wear, to put shoes on their kids feet and on and on. We truly can't even begin to compare our lives today to the lives of the vast majority of those who lived in these tenements. They made the best of what they had. It was home. 
PipesThe pipes above the stove are gas pipes. Note the shut-off valves on the pipes. 
(The Gallery, DPC, Kitchens etc., NYC)

Free Ice: 1900
... East Side, and seen these turn-of-the-19th-century former tenement neighborhoods? They are still standing: five- and six-floor walk-ups, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/28/2018 - 10:09am -

Circa 1900. "Heat wave. Free ice in New York." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative by Byron for the Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Great TimingMy friends back East say it brutally hot just now, Hudson Valley included.
More than just comfortI would bet that most of these people are not going to use this ice for chilling their drinks. They're probably going to use it to keep their food from spoiling.
One thing about the present day is we continually go from hot to air conditioned environments during a heat wave.  In New York, no matter how cold it gets outside, the subway cars are usually cooled to the point of refrigeration.  This keeps our bodies from becoming acclimated to the temps.  These folks have been in the heat and have become somewhat adjusted.  The clothes they wear are probably all cotton or linen, both of which have the ability to wick the sweat away and help cool the body. I'm sure they're pretty miserable, but coping. 
You'd get a line for free ice right nowWith temperatures hitting 101 degrees, in the middle of a l-o-o-ng week of 95+, you'll get plenty of people willing to stand in line for bags of free ice.
Ice cubes in a bowl + fan = poor man's air conditioning.
Thanks, Dave, for reminding us that some things never change, like NYC heat waves in the summertime. The children who grew up standing in those lines supported the construction of municipal swimming pools during the New Deal. They remembered!
Nostalgic and VintageI absolutely love old photographs, the older the better. You get to experience people, places and things frozen in time.
Sure this isn't Japan?The policeman looks like he's wearing white gloves. That would suck on a hot day like it appears to be in the picture.
Hot CommodityLater on, someone realized they could spritz it with food coloring and some flavored syrup and charge for it.
The Iceman (and Milkman) ComethBack in the 1940's in Newburgh NY in the midst of a summer heat wave, neighborhood kids would raid the back of the open ice delivery truck while the iceman would be tonging a block of ice to home ice boxes. Another source for kids, of small chunks of ice, was in milk delivery trucks while the milkman was delivering his wares. 
Weather's nice here in Monterey.It might have gotten to 65 here today.  
Staten Island FerryWhen my parents married in New York, in 1953, they stayed with a friend in Harlem. It was so hot and a neighbour was having a rent party so my parents took the Staten Island ferry back and forth all night long. Cool and quiet, compared to their friends' apartment.
I lived on City Island, in the Bronx, for two years and with no air-conditioning, and the ceiling fans not being up to the job, it was like trying to sleep in pea soup.
Trying To Imagine...what NYC must have smelled like with all of those sweating people and piles of horse manure in the streets makes me not want to go back in time to experience what is going on in the photo. This is a first in all my time as a Shorpy fan.
Melting PotTemperatures in Manhattan will probably go over 100 degrees today. It has been in the high 90s for the last few days and will be in or around the 100 degree mark for the rest of the week. There will be no free ice and the local utility, Con Ed, has started cutting back on the power so the air conditioners are not performing to spec. I think I'll go to a movie today, their sign says they're 20 degrees cooler inside. Incidentally, movie theatre air conditioning goes back to 1925 when Dr. Willis Carrier cooled the new Rivoli Theatre on Broadway.
Fishy, indeed!We are experiencing a real heat wave in New York today. I don't for a minute believe that the photo was taken in a temperature that comes close to our 100+
Look at the barefoot boys on that sidewalk -- there's your proof.
I got news for yahFree Ice? That's nothing special. Every February there is tons if it in New York. You just need to plan ahead a little.
Hats Year RoundUp until the 1950's or so, you will notice that headgear was always part of the dress code.  My dad wore a hat most of the year.  It had to be hot and uncomfortable.  
Something's FishyI can't believe all their icemakers went out at once.They need to call the super and complain.
Take it offThey sure are wearing a lot of clothes for a heat wave. I'd lose the jackets and long sleeves.
Barefoot tykesThat sidewalk had to be hot!
HatsA few years ago I bought a straw hat and It seems to actually make you feel cooler on a hot day.
Cool LidOnly a straw hat would make sense, or maybe one of these.
Poor timingHow about some lovely pictures of deep snow, ice-covered lakes, or something to make us feel cooler in today's hot weather?
The Long Hot SummerLooks like the cop has had a long day. As hot has his uniform is, my hubby now has to wear pretty much all that, except in polyester and with an extra 35 pounds of equipment, plus a bullet proof vest. It's been hovering around or at 100 lately here in Maryland, and his vest doesn't have time to dry out from sweat one day before he puts it on the next. So next time you see a cop sitting in his car with the AC on on a hot day, think of that guy up there! He could use a little break! (I hope he got hold of some ice chunks.)
Waaaaah!I love reading about the New York heat waves with temperature in the 90s or even 101 (!).  If it was in the 90s in Austin, we'd all be wearing parkas.  
Most of these people want Gordon Park!As in the last picture.
Even in these Victorian times you can see signs of the heat, the cop wiping his brow, most men in the derbies have them way back on their head to let the heat out, and the straw hat man doesn't because they let heat out, just as the Mexican and South East Asian farmers learned from history.
 I loved the snow cone comment, probably very right, why give the melting ice away if you can sell it!
Hot mamaSo I can see why they had the long pants, skirts and hats, but couldn't she have left the shawl off?
Hey, Austin tipster We NY/NJ SMSAers feel the same way about you guys when your highways are shut down after 4 or 5 inches of snow. We laugh at your puny "frozen precipitation levels" that seem to cause such chaos! 
Have you ever been on the Lower East Side, and seen these turn-of-the-19th-century former tenement neighborhoods? They are still standing: five- and six-floor walk-ups, built with no help from Mr Otis, crowded together on narrow streets. 
Even today, Austin's population density of 2600 people per square mile is less than 1/10th of New York City's (26,100). Crowding ten times as many people into every square mile raises the ambient temperature of NYC exponentially. When the weather report says "90" in a town of crowded, narrow streets with ten times as many people, it is a medical emergency.
Be grateful that, in your hometown, such temperatures make you reach for a sweater. It's not a sign of how much tougher Texans are in comparison to New Yorkers. It means that you are fortunate to live where the historical development patterns have provided you an environment where weather extremes aren't so dangerous to human health.
547Was looking for clues about the location of this picture and noticed the clothing store has "547" on the awning (alas no street name).  Looking closer you can see that "547" is also written on the inside of the awning and reflected in the store window.  But the reflection isn't backwards ... so perhaps it was written backwards so that people facing the window could see the non-backwards number in the reflection?  Very curious.
[The "547" on the outside of the awning would be backwards on the inside of the awning because it's the same "547" showing through the canvas.  - Dave]
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Stores & Markets)

Tenement Kitchen: 1905
New York circa 1905. "Interior of tenement." All the conveniences, including a somewhat incongruous couch on ... out of the book. It's funny how nice a "lowly" tenement room can look without modern plastic junk all over the place. Nice ... Changing markets Pretty spacious and spiffy for a tenement! Bet it now rents for $7k a month to a junior law partner. The ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/23/2012 - 3:43pm -

New York circa 1905. "Interior of tenement." All the conveniences, including a somewhat incongruous couch on wheels.  8x10 glass negative. View full size.
A Tree Grows in BrooklynThis could be straight out of the book.
It's funny how nice a "lowly" tenement room can look without modern plastic junk all over the place.
Nice place!It was a lot more run down by the time the Kramdens moved in fifty years later.
Royal BustsI think the busts are of Tsar Alexander III and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna.  Any other ideas?
The picture on the shelfThe one behind the clock looks like it might be a cased Civil War era half plate Tintype of a mother and her baby.
Godfather Part IIAll that's missing here is Vito C, Clemenza, and Tessio...all sitting around the table with a big bowl of pasta and a jug of vino.
Immigrants from the UK?Busts on the wall shelf are of King Edward VII (reigned 1901 to 1910) and Queen Alexandra.
On the shelfBusts of Queen Alexandra and Edward VII? Plus a photo of a magician? Never saw a radiator like that.
Changing marketsPretty spacious and spiffy for a tenement! Bet it now rents for $7k a month to a junior law partner.
The Curious SofaThat incongruous couch on wheels is a late and decidedly on-the-cheap version of the Victorian lounge sofa, now popularly called a fainting couch. Lounge sofas were a kind of casual daybed, and the cook in this very tidy tenement kitchen might have had it there to rest her back while she was waiting for the dough to rise. The shiny, pleated upholstery on this one looks like the sort of imitation leather typically used on the cheaper versions of these sofas, and the tied fringe is made of the same material, probably a nitrocellulose-coated thin canvas. Many types of 19th Century household furniture were mounted with small cast brass caster wheels. They were hell on floor finishes. Here's a similar lounge sofa that has been reupholstered in a cheery and completely non-historic furnishing fabric.
Apt furnishingThe couch is to assist an Edwardian lady experiencing an attack of the kitchen vapours.
Another viewof a similar kitchen in this post. At first I thought it might be the same room, but the stove-corner artwork is different.

Coronation SouvenirsThe white bisque porcelain busts of Alexandra of Denmark and her husband Edward VII were produced circa 1902 by Robinson & Leadbetter of Stoke-on-Trent. Here is an identical pair.
Homeless headsThis shot reminds me of all the photos I see for sale in antique stores today.  Some of the photos are even fairly recent (1960s-'70s).  It breaks my heart that so many don't keep their family photos!  If I ever become independently wealthy, I'll spend my time "rescuing" these photos & posting them to Shorpy!
Re: HammeredNot only is plaster impossible to get nails to stick in--in some places, they used to mix horsehair in with the plaster, which actually gave it a springy quality.  I remember talking to the owners of an old home once and they described the first (and last) time they tried to drive a nail in--it came shooting back out at them. 
Re: Homeless headsYou may want to check this out, sackerland, someone is already running with your idea.
http://forgottenoldphotos.blogspot.com/
Unusual radiatorThe radiator likely appears unusual because of its context.  It is of a design that is typically hung horizontally from a ceiling.  This style of rad only requires about five inches total clearance from the wall, which is likely why it was selected for this location. One can tell that it's the original installation because foot valve it too close to the wall for there to be room for a conventional rad.
BustDefinitely Edward VII (eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert). Quite probably modelled after this one (Nov. 9, 1901)
Elegant is as elegant doesThere's no denying the inherent elegance of the family that lived here, regardless of its fiscal condition, and the artistic care someone showed in decorating this kitchen. Note the symmetrical arrangement of the pictures on the wall, the busts on the shelf, etc., and of course the spotless wood floor. Lovely.   
Kitchen differencesThis one has half as many gas lamp jets. The sink is out of view in each photo (assuming there was one actually located in the apartment, rather than down the hall), but it's safe to say that the concept of the work triangle had not occurred to anyone yet.
HammeredDoes anyone know why pictures were hung like that in the early 20th century? I have seen the exact same hanging mode for pics ranging from middle class folks to European royalty so it was clearly THE way to do it--but why not just hammer a nail in like we do nowadays?
[Ever try hammering a nail into plaster? - Dave]
That SofaIn "Ann of Green Gables" there's casual mention of someone sitting on the kitchen sofa, which gives us a pretty good hint about what wintertime home heating was like in PEI, Canada. Maybe the same thing here?
Lowly can certainly be a relative termEspecially when you consider what tenement housing was like just a few years prior to this, and still was in many parts of New York. The tenement act that sought to create places like this one had only been passed in 1901. Prior to that, this apartment probably would not have had gas fixtures, heat, or windows to capture light to take this photo. 
More a napping couchMost families living in tenements used the kitchen as a bedroom at night. 
This family appears to be working-class English. The glass and ceramic knick-knacks seem very urban North of England to me - Leeds, Newcastle, etc.
Similar kitchensThey certainly do look like the same room, and I was going to suggest that the two photos  were taken at different times with different wall decor - but then I noticed the floorboards.  Definitely different rooms.  
OCDI feel the need to straighten those pictures on the wall!
The "lowly" tenementAs noted elsewhere on Shorpy, the meaning of "tenement" has changed over time. Far from being synonymous with "slum dwelling," it originally connoted a dwelling in any tenanted building, or the building itself. Its root is the Latin word tenere, meaning "to hold."

The kitchen as bedroomI am reminded of my first historic house tour, Naperville's 1883 Martin Mitchell Mansion, when I was in the third grade. All of the beds had the pillows propped up against the headboard, and we were told that people slept with their heads more or less upright, lest lying flat should result in pneumonia or consumption or whatever. The construction of this couch would be consistent with such a belief.
Occupants of the Martin Mitchell Mansion had no need to sleep in the kitchen, but I remember a vacuum cleaner powered by a pair of bellows strapped to the user's feet!
The kitchen couchMy parents have a couch in their kitchen too. Used for watching TV, using the internet, talking on the phone, napping, or just socializing in the kitchen area.
But they don't have a radiator, especially not a work of art radiator like that one!
That amazing sofa!The "kitchen sofa" is an American Empire or Greek Revival recamier, also called a Grecian sofa or "fainting bed." This one was probably made in NY prior to 1855, when Victorian furniture came in vogue. The tight bolster indicates a "high style" piece that would be very valuable today. Tenement dwellers often kept a cradle or small bed in the kitchen for a child's nap time, which would allow Mom to keep working at the same time. This is a pretty fancy "cradle."
(The Gallery, DPC, Kitchens etc., NYC)

Clam Chowder Today: 1905
New York City circa 1905. "Exterior of tenement." The longer you look at this, the more you'll see. 8x10 inch glass ... were some terrific restaurants in that immediate area. Tenement? In New York City a "tenement" is considered to be a small (under ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/14/2012 - 2:37pm -

New York City circa 1905. "Exterior of tenement." The longer you look at this, the more you'll see. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size.
Time for some road repairWow, that's a nasty bit of road in front of that building.
HauntingBest face-in-a-window shot in a long time.  Looks like a painting, and speaks of timeless solitude across a century.
308Who'll be the first to post a Street View?
S&H Green StampsAnd here I thought they were a product of the 1950s, or earlier.
["Earlier" would seem to be correct. - Dave]
Pop. 2So far I see two people in this photo. Not counting George McClellan.
I wanna buy that mason a beer!Those are the coolest headers I've ever seen! There's probably a term for that style, for all I know. 
The cobblestones on the street are another story. No doubt a mosquito plague after every rain.
DeepI think I lost a truck in that pothole.
Scared the bejesus out of me!The shadowy lady in the doorway! And the pensive woman in the window looks so lost in thought. The people in this photo are the best part!
Down in flamesHmmm, fire escapes that go nowhere.
Maybe notI was thinking of swiping something out of that tool chest, then I read the label!
Loafer DeterrentThose sharp triangles on the top of the railings look to be very effective at keeping people from sitting on them.
[Also effective for loafing pigeons -- note that they're also on the lower rung. - Dave]
Trading stampsThat S&H Green Stamp sign would be quite a collectible now. Sperry & Hutchinson began in 1896. They're still around, just virtual.
Give the man a steak to go with the beer!The brickwork is fantastic. Look at the fancy work above the second floor windows and the double diamondwork up the walls. I have never seen diamondwork in brick before.
It does not survive.308 East 40th Street (courtesy of the 1915 city directory).
View Larger Map
Chillin at the windowI count two windowsill milk bottles. Plus some paper-wrapped packages, maybe meat or butter.
I just figured it outWhy do vintage street lamps always those two arms sticking out? To support a ladder for maintenance!
Thank you!Clicking on these photos to get the full-size view is like opening gifts!  I'm thrilled every time.  Thank you.
Tudor City308 East 40th Street in Manhattan is just off Second Avenue on the south side of the street and just a few doors away from the Tudor City apartment and park complex. Back in the 1980's, there were some terrific restaurants in that immediate area.
Tenement?In New York City a "tenement" is considered to be a small (under five story with no elevator) overcrowded run-down building. The houses on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s were tenements.  308 East 40th Street does not fit that description.
[Meanings change over time. Strictly speaking, a tenement is any tenanted building, i.e. apartment house. Below, NYC real-estate listings from 1905. - Dave]
GaslightThe lamplighter would lean his ladder against those arms.
It's a gas!I see that H. Kino the Tailor still uses gaslights (in the front window) -- but seeing as how this building was a "tenement," I suppose electrification was a low priority.
Fire EscapesThe two "Fire Escapes" I guess are not  balconies but have no apparent way to get down to street and away from the conflagration. The only thing I can figure is the NYFD would come and raise  a ladder to them. We can't tell how tall the building is but I imagine no more than four or five stories [Actually, seven. - Dave]. The fire escapes for the floors above must be on the sides and rear of the building. I am having trouble identifying the metal bracket affixed to the wall between the tailor shop window and it's door. It looks like it could have held a hanging sign but appears to be too low.
Morning scrubbingThe lady in at the doorway seems to be scrubbing the floors. You can see the water dripping down the front step.
Graffiti If you zoom in you can see initials chalked on the bricks.
JuniorIn spite of the apparent distaste someone in this neighborhood had for George B. McClellan, he won his mayoral campaign. The name sounds familiar, of course, and the man on the poster is the son of Civil War General George B. McClellan. He served as mayor of New York City from 1904 to 1909 (he was elected first for a two-year term, and then for a four-year term).
Apparently he was a little moralistic, and canceled all motion-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. Perhaps that's why he was not encouraged to run for reelection for the 1910 term.
Once, tenements were even respectableLovely curtains, with lace or bobbles or fringe, at every window. No broken glass. Well-kept and middle-class.
Jacob Riis had shown New York tenements as nothing but degrading slums. "How The Other Half Lives" was only 15 years old when this photograph was made. But there was always a strong sense of middle-class values that resided in the people who lived in the "better" tenements. They embraced the Settlement House movement, strove to present a "decent" face to the world, and certainly didn't want to be tarred with the same label as those dirty, disreputable slum-dwellers downtown.
What an amazing image. There's so much we've forgotten. Thank you for reminding us.
George B. McClellan JrMayor of New York 1904-1909.  Born in Dresden, Germany, and son of Gen. McClellan of Civil War blundering.
Elmer's GantryOn the wall above the cellar stairs, there's a triangular rig for hoisting stuff up out of the basement.
Where'd the cart go?There are two other photos of this tenement in the Library of Congress collection. They look much more inhabited and show how this image might have been manipulated for effect -- the other images show the address number (curiously missing here), the awning down, and a cart of produce in front of the building, a much more inviting view.
[Nothing was "manipulated." You can't see the address numbers because they're on the front doors, which are both open in this view. - Dave]
Lace Curtain IrishIf this is chowda, it must be Friday.  When I was a kid, every Friday was meatless and during that era, the better-off Irish were referred to as titled.  Likewise the Polish people who were "comfortable" were "silk stocking Poles" and my father used to call us cotton stocking Poles.  Both ethnicities were Catholic and Friday always meant seafood, (Irish were also referred to as "mackerel snappers) and odors of frying fish, tuna salad and chowda permeated the neighborhoods.  My mom made three kinds of chowda, New England with a creamy, white base, Manhattan with a tomato base and lots of vegetables and Rhode Island which was a lighter version of the N.E. kind but with added broth.  I love them all but also miss the smell of everybody's tuna and onion sandwiches at school lunch and fish frying aromas wafting through our town at supper time.  I do remember that fresh mackerel was ten cents a pound and almost everyone could afford it.  Thanks for the great nostalgic picture, the despairing lady in the window seems trapped and scared, there has to be a story there.   
Windowsill gardenI love the window with all the plants in it! Hard to tell what they are, though it looks like one may be an orchid. I wonder if they were purely ornamental or if some were herbs for cooking. Either way, you've got to cram as many as you can into your available sunny spaces!
Francie is gazing out the windowIt could be Francie. It could.  A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was my favorite book as a young adult and this detailed photograph brings a better understanding of the novel.
Almost "Norman Rockwell"Imagine a 5000-piece picture puzzle with this photo as the topic!
I LEARN so much from the comments!This is one of my favorite sites for resting my weary eyes during work breaks. And while I certainly savor the photos, so many layers are added by the comments. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your knowledge.
Holy horse dung!Having lived in Manhattan for 12 (yes, only 12) years and having moved away, this photo leaves me speechless.  
The detail of the photographic process is amazing and the subtle (and somewhat hidden) joys on view here make me wanna head back for any chowder--even the famous Gowanus Canal Chow.  All the sights, smells and sounds of the greatest city on earth come back to me. Many thanks.
I now live on this spotOr possibly right next to it.  I live in the Churchill, a 33-story apartment building at 300 East 40th Street - it takes up the entire block between 39th and 40th Street, and 2nd Avenue and Tunnel Entrance Street.  308 was either torn down to make room for the Churchill (built 1968) or possibly during the building of the Midtown tunnel and its approaches (1936-40).
What am I missing?Just wondering how "swein" determined that this was E. 40th; might I be enlightened on this "1915 directory"? I'm half-cringing in anticipation of a "duh" moment but I've looked over the pic & the comments -- and I'm not getting it.
[Swein consulted the 1915 Manhattan City Directory for Wm. Inwood, Grocer, and found a listing that matched the 308 address in the window. - Dave]
Do You Supposethe Sicilian Asphalt Company also offered a line of concrete shoes?
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Stores & Markets)

Tenement Stairs: 1905
Circa 1905. "Tenement stairway and hall, New York City." The Trudge Report. 8x10 inch dry ... like "squalid" or "reeking" or "crumbling" to the word tenement in contemporary news articles and essays reveals that the noun was not ... "impecunious" are often closely associated, the "old law" tenement maximized density and minimized cost to the detriment of access to ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/19/2012 - 2:41pm -

Circa 1905. "Tenement stairway and hall, New York City." The Trudge Report. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Ragg MoppHave these people never heard of a Mop?
Don't Jump to ConclusionsLooks less like 'sloppy' than partway through renovations. The stuff on the floor could be old mastic.
Plaster spillage?The wall at left seems to show evidence of plaster repairs to holes, and there's further evidence of plaster work at the top of the stairs. I think the two white circles on the hall floor are where buckets of plaster stood, and the nearer bucket got tipped over so that its contents ran along the floor. 
Ready for the Painters!This hallway view shows new construction. The wrought iron railing and stair stringers have not been painted yet and a scribed line in the plaster is visible about three feet above the floor where the separation of paint colors will be. A darker color below to hide scuffs and fingerprints.
No sense in mopping the floor until the painters have finished.
Not Originally A PejorativeThe frequent affixing of adjectives like "squalid" or "reeking" or "crumbling" to the word tenement in contemporary news articles and essays reveals that the noun was not always a pejorative.  Indeed, it refers to an arrangement of flats in a multi-storied building served by a central staircase, usually constructed with one or two walls in common with adjacent buildings.  (The Romans had 'em; you can look it up!) Because it was a cheap and profitable way to provide housing for the many,  and because "many" and "impecunious" are often closely associated, the "old law" tenement maximized density and minimized cost to the detriment of access to light and fresh air, resulting in a gradual acceptance of the term as the equivalent of "slum."  Well, that and the presence of four generations in a one-bedroom, picking rags and praying for the Bronx.
KudosTo the sharp-eyed Shorpy viewers for noticing all the minute details of this photo, and that the building was indeed probably going through a renovation rather than just being a dirty old mess! I never caught all this until I read these astute observations.
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC)

New York Tenement: 1912
... family works on garters in the kitchen of a New York City tenement home. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, November, 1912. View full size. ... 
 
Posted by Ken - 09/08/2011 - 8:23pm -

A Jewish family works on garters in the kitchen of a New York City tenement home. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, November, 1912. View full size.
What?My 14-year old daughter asked "What's garters?"
What's Garters?Well in this particular case you can tell your daughter that they are used to hold up a gentleman's socks. Ladies' garters looked...different. You can still buy gentlemen's garters - you can certainly find them online.
(The Gallery, Kids, Lewis Hine, NYC)

Tenement Ec: 1908
... with the massive overcrowding of New York's poor into tenement neighborhoods. This photo documents the model two-room apartment ... (the former Consuelo Vanderbilt), to the East Side tenement dwellers themselves, including a girl who told a reporter that she was ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 02/25/2012 - 2:10am -

New York circa 1908. "Class in Practical Housekeeping -- Congestion Exhibit." 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
Girls, next weekWe will cover sweeping and dusting, and that small book case  at the foot of the bed is where we'll start.
The Congestion ExhibitionThis unusual and influential exhibition was organized by the American Museum of Natural History, and ran from March 9 through March 22, 1908. Many social welfare organizations, including city departments and private charities, participated in this attempt to document and expose the complex social and public health issues associated with the massive overcrowding of New York's poor into tenement neighborhoods. This photo documents the model two-room apartment exhibit built by the Association of Practical Housekeeping Centres, to demonstrate the classes they offered to working class women and girls on how to cope with their overcrowded living spaces. Other architectural installations included a facsimile East Side sweatshop, which displayed its "uncleanness and wretchedness." The exhibition was well publicized and very well attended by New Yorkers from both up and down the social ladder, from the Duchess of Marlborough (the former Consuelo Vanderbilt), to the East Side tenement dwellers themselves, including a girl who told a reporter that she was astonished to see a photograph of herself at work in a sweatshop. The New York Times archive retains many news articles about this exhibition, among them "Exhibit Will Tell All About New York," published March 1, 1908. 
(The Gallery, G.G. Bain, NYC)

Tenement Homeworker: 1912
Tenement homeworker with clothing tags. Roxbury, Massachusetts. August 1912. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/07/2011 - 2:03pm -

Tenement homeworker with clothing tags. Roxbury, Massachusetts. August 1912. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size. Homeworkers, often children, sewed tags onto finished garments or performed other piecework at home instead of going to school.
Putting things in perspectiveI'm bookmarking that page. Next time one of my kids complains about having to pick up their Legos or clean their rooms, I'm going to show them some of those pictures and point out that things could be worse!
OMGohhh my God.. .. Thank goodnesss i dont have to do all of this things...i am 13 and i am very lazyy..lol..i am going to go do the dishes right now
Working youngI was working at the age of 12. Went out to the fields to pick berries and beans. But I didn't miss school to do it.
(The Gallery, Kids, Lewis Hine)

Tidy That Tenement!
A 1937 Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project poster asking New Yorkers to keep the premises clean. View full size. Now a fine-art print. (The Gallery, Art & Design, Posters) ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 12/09/2007 - 9:52pm -

A 1937 Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project poster asking New Yorkers to keep the premises clean. View full size. Now a fine-art print.
(The Gallery, Art & Design, Posters)

Tenement Beautiful: 1921
        Before Urban Renewal, there was the Hyacinth Window Box. March 1921. "City Gardens Club of New York exhibit at the International Flower Show, Grand Central Palace." From the Home Improvement issue of Bette ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/21/2014 - 2:40pm -

        Before Urban Renewal, there was the Hyacinth Window Box.
March 1921. "City Gardens Club of New York exhibit at the International Flower Show, Grand Central Palace." From the Home Improvement issue of Better Hovels & Gardens. Gelatin silver print by Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size.
Three generations of exhibition hallsGrand Central Palace was not related to Grand Central Terminal even though it was located just a short distance away.  It was New York's main exhibition hall from its opening in 1911 until the early 1950's, when it was demolished and a high-rise built on the site. The New York Coliseum on Columbus Circle then became the city's exhibition hall, a status it held until the Javits Convention Center opened in the 1980's.
Now the Javits Center itself is becoming obsolete, being too small for today's mega-conventions, but there are no real plans to replace it.
Odd couplesMr. and Mrs. Ungar told their boy to stay away from that Madison kid next door.
ClotheslineWhy is a clothesline in a narrow-lot yard always taken to be a sign of squalor?  It's simply a feature of high-density housing.
Magic flowersThat's amazing! If planting flowers can pick up your garbage, straighten your shutters and paint them, and dry your laundry with neither electric dryer nor clothesline, I guess I should get planting!
(The Gallery, F.B. Johnston, NYC)

The Washboard Jungle: 1900
"New York tenement yard c. 1900-10." One of the better surviving images of turn of the century tenement life. Detroit Publishing glass negative. View full size. ... a lot of us. Dave, you play well to your audience. Tenement Days I'm a student in Glasgow now, and there are echoes of the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/26/2012 - 4:52pm -

"New York tenement yard c. 1900-10." One of the better surviving images of turn of the century tenement life. Detroit Publishing glass negative. View full size.
Pulley ClotheslinesOur Mother used one of these when we lived in a flat in San Francisco. When the wind whipped the clothes over and over the lines, it was murder trying to get them reeled back in. (Note the clothesline on the topmost left.) I wonder who shinnied up those poles to attach the the pulleys. Probably a kid like Shorpy. A long way down the steps to the courtyard if you dropped a sock. 
Green SheetsIt may just look like clothing hung out to dry, but I see a linear solar-powered fabric dehydrator.
PantaloonsNo tighty whiteys here
Whites OnlyWas this a day for only washing whites? Because that must be 80% of the clothes here. Or did people back then wear very few darks and coloureds? I know in my household, whites make up a small fraction of our laundry.
[I think I see some grays. - Dave]
What got washed.The whites were the items most washed, dark clothes were the wool coats, hats, dresses, even pants, that were not washed every week like underwear and shirts. 
I wonder if the idea of a "washday" was so that the courtyard only looked like this one day a week. 
For the birdsI'd sure hate it if a flock of pigeons flew by.
Bird HeavenYou would think there would be a problem with pigeons sitting on the lines.
Scenes like this always remind me of the old cartoons where a character falls from a plane or something, goes through the lines and ends ends up safely on the ground dressed in some odd combination of apparel he accumulated along the way.
Air-DriedThere's nothing like clean sheets and towels fresh from the line.  Tumble-drying is a poor substitute.
East End AvenueIt looked a lot like that in the 1940's too.  I lived with my folks at 48 East End Avenue, not far from Gracie Mansion in Carl Shurtz Park.  It was not glam in those days, and we lived in a second floor apartment above a liquor store and florist shop.  Out the back were the usual New York back yards above which were the spider web of laundry lines, many of which did go from building to building.  I've got a painting my dad did of the view out the living room window, and also paintings of the ice house that burned in a fire around the corner from us.  From the Park we could watch the progress as the UN building was built.
WashdayI had an acquaintance many years ago from the Boston area. Every Wednesday you could count on him for at least two or three call-outs for "Wednesday Washday." So that makes me think you might be onto something.
Now that this particular photo shows the poles on which the pulleys were attached, it clears up my mistaken impression that these lines were strung between buildings. Makes sense that they weren't. Just for the conflicts between who got to use the line on any given day.
These kind of everyday activity photos are a real specialty of Shorpy which seems to please a lot of us. Dave, you play well to your audience.
Tenement DaysI'm a student in Glasgow now, and there are echoes of the tenement days in the way the washing is strung up in the courtyard -- it's metal pulleys now, and they're not high in the air between the buildings, but they're really close to the same. I must admit that though I put clothes out to air dry in California -- where in the summer, they can dry in ten minutes sometimes -- I haven't brought myself to do it here. Between the rabid seagulls, the breweries and the distilleries and the air pollution, I think my whites would be a bit gray...
Ropa Tendida!En mi pueblo aun es así. (With my people it is the same.)
Puzzling subjectThis photo would make a great jigsaw puzzle.
[Hmmm. - Dave]
Day of the Week?Not so sure about a designated or fixed day for doing the wash back then. Our family still relies on outdoor drying and, like haymaking, must be done "while the sun shines."
[Back in olden times, anyone could have told you that  washday was Monday. - Dave]
Everyday is washdayor at least when I was growing up. We had two lines off the back of the house, and if it was muggy it would take a long time to dry. So you would hang the clothes in the morning, then dry them all day and start over the next day. All the whites go together because the bleach would ruin anything else.
"Wash on Monday...Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday"
I remember my grandmother baking the week's bread on Saturday. My mother would start off the week doing laundry and then I would earn a penny for each of my father's handkerchiefs that I ironed the next day.  However, we never churned our own butter.
Cloth diapersEwww. Just Ewww.
DiapersFabulous photo, like this cropped version better than the full one. About cloth diapers: I was the oldest of four and folded a lot of diapers in the 1950s. (And yes, they come in from the line frozen stiff in winter and have to be draped about the house to finish drying.) Not to get too graphic here, but if not changed frequently, babies got terrible rashes and sores, so 10 or 12 diapers a day wouldn't be a lot. My mother bought 4 or 5 dozen for each new baby. So, I would have thought there would be a lot more diapers in this image than there seem to be. Maybe people living in tenements in 1900 couldn't afford fabric to be used only for diapers and used rags? Or diapers were shaped differently and I don't recognize them?
Anthony! Anthony!I thought Wednesday was Prince spaghetti day.


(The Gallery, DPC, NYC)

D.C. Tenement: 1935
Summer 1935. "Washington, D.C., alley dwelling. The clutter of filth, debris and tin cans all have highly utilitarian purposes. Many of the houses are without gas, water, or electric connections." Note the Capitol dome at the top of the frame. Our ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/02/2014 - 12:50pm -

Summer 1935. "Washington, D.C., alley dwelling. The clutter of filth, debris and tin cans all have highly utilitarian purposes. Many of the houses are without gas, water, or electric connections." Note the Capitol dome at the top of the frame. Our second look at this abode. Harris & Ewing glass negative. View full size.
Perfect IronyMy soon to be married cousin invited me to visit with her at her new house in Philadelphia so she wouldn't be alone before her husband would move in with her. We are both from Canada. The first thing she did is told me to hop in the car with her because she wanted to show me something about Philadelphia that I would never forget.
First we drove along a downtown street and we saw beautiful skyscrapers and men and women in business suits carrying briefcases. Then she turned the corner and said, "Look at this." Two blocks down all the buildings were dilapidated and the sidewalks and fences were in upheaval. It looked like a huge bomb had gone off and nothing had been repaired for ages. Everybody was poor and black and looked quite sad.
I mumbled, "What is this?" and without skipping a beat she said, "This, my friend, is an American ghetto." I looked back behind us and saw dilapidated buildings in the foreground and beautiful skyscrapers in the background where mostly white businessmen and women were walking. The contrast in that scene was ironic yet telling. This picture above captures the same mood and irony of that day with the white house dome in the background in contrast to the utter despair surrounding this woman of colour in the foreground.
Almost 80 years later and the problem depicted so perfectly in this photo continues to exist. This photo is both sad and perfect. 
IceboxInteresting to note that this lady has an icebox on her balcony. 
Is it because she has replaced it with a modern gas or electric refrigerator inside, or is it so sweltering in her  home that the blocks of ice (and stored food) will last longer with the icebox located outdoors?
(The Gallery, D.C., Harris + Ewing)

Tenement Kitchen (Colorized): 1905
Colorized from this Shorpy original. View full size. (Colorized Photos) ... 
 
Posted by booboogbs - 10/27/2017 - 6:19pm -

Colorized from this Shorpy original. View full size.
(Colorized Photos)

Liberty Garter: 1908
... Not far from the Tenement Museum Just a few blocks from the Tenement Museum where the stories of families like the Finkelsteins are ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/12/2017 - 2:10pm -

        This just in from historian Joe Manning: An update on Yetta Finkelstein and her family.

January 1908. New York. "Mrs. Finkelstein, 127 Monroe Street. Bessie (age 13), Sophie (age 7). Girls attend school. Making garters for Liberty Garter works, 413 Broadway. Mother, a widow, earns 75 cents a day by working all day until 12 at night. Bessie works until 10 p.m., Sophie until 9. They expected to work until 10 p.m. to finish the job, although they did not know when more work would come in. Witness Mrs. Hosford." Glass negative by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.
VanishedOnly two blocks of Monroe Street survive today. They're in a neighborhood sometimes called "Two Bridges" but which most everyone considers part of Chinatown. One of the blocks is literally under the Manhattan Bridge, which would have been nearing completion at the time of this photo. The northern few blocks of the street, including the part where 127 would have been located, were obliterated about 50 years ago for construction of the Rutgers Houses project. 
Before Henry FordMrs. Finkelstein has devised an assembly line.  The daughter on her left puts the hardware in place; Mrs. F lines them up so she can sew a bunch of garters without lifting the presser foot or snipping the threads. Her little girl counts and bundles. Possibly she also cuts the threads joining the garters and knots the threads. 
Socksand then some Genius invented socks that stay up and they all lost their jobs.....oh the humanity.
My grand-mamoja babcia miała taką maszynę. Singer ... Robił ana niej cuda.
Found themFound them in the 1919 and 1920 census in New York. Here is the 1910 one. 
Yetta 37 Ruso Yiddish
Moses son 15 works in silver plate shop
Bessie daughter 13
Sophie daughter 8
Henry son 6
Some minor changes and the addition of another son, omitted in 1910. Moses who becomes Morris still works in silver while the remaining kids are still producing garments. 
Liberty Garter 1908: the Finkelstein family This is Joe Manning, of the Lewis Hine Project. I have completed a story about this family. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate any living descendants. Here is the story:
http://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2015/01/18/yetta-finkelstein-family/
The story of Yetta Finkelstein and familyThis is Joe Manning, of the Lewis Hine Project. I finally connected with descendants, and finished my story of this family. The family faced enormous struggles when the children were young, but later managed to achieve a comfortable and relatively prosperous life. See the full story at this link:
https://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2015/01/18/yetta-finkelstein-family/
Not far from the Tenement MuseumJust a few blocks from the Tenement Museum where the stories of families like the Finkelsteins are preserved and retold. Highly recommended for Shorpy denizens next time you're in the Big Apple.
(The Gallery, Kids, Lewis Hine, NYC)

Work From Home: 1912
January 1912. "Tenement homework, New York, 309 W. 146th Street. Mrs. De Levo [?] and her ... sick. [They have a pill for that now. -Dave] Tenement Homework If you live in/near NYC or are visiting the city consider a trip to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. They have a tenement building that looks every bit as bad as ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 04/03/2014 - 10:35pm -

January 1912. "Tenement homework, New York, 309 W. 146th Street. Mrs. De Levo [?] and her 7-year-old daughter, Lorenza, embroidering ladies' waists in their dirty kitchen-living room. Lorenza makes the stems of the flowers. Her mother said, 'See how smart she is. I show her how and right away she makes them. She is so little because she's been sick so much.' She works after school. Father is out of a job. 'They pay too cheap for lace.' Said they make about $2 a week." Glass nega­tive by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee. View full size.
And TodayKids demand their cell phones and iPads, etc. Makes me sick.
[They have a pill for that now. -Dave]
Tenement HomeworkIf you live in/near NYC or are visiting the city consider a trip to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  They have a tenement building that looks every bit as bad as this photo.
Several tenement apartments are set up to represent the Jewish immigrants from the turn of the century, later Italian immigrants and so forth.  It's sobering.
Still ThereThe building, that is; I suspect mom and the kids have moved on.
View Larger Map
(The Gallery, Kids, Kitchens etc., Lewis Hine, NYC)

Home Wreckers: 1941
... be interesting to know the exact location. Dumbbell Tenement Exposed The demolition here affords us a rare "inside look" at the air shaft and party wall of a notorious "dumbbell" tenement. This "model" apartment design for the poor was the subject of a ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/23/2018 - 9:53am -

December 1941. "Employees of a wrecking company eating lunch. New York, New York." Medium format negative by Edwin Rosskam. View full size.
Things to ComeNYC began building its first public housing projects around that time, and it's possible that this neighborhood was undergoing renewal. It would be interesting to know the exact location.
Dumbbell Tenement ExposedThe demolition here affords us a rare "inside look" at the air shaft and party wall of a notorious "dumbbell" tenement. This "model" apartment design for the poor was the subject of a competition held in 1878 by Plumber and Sanitary Engineer Magazine and won by architect James E. Ware. The dumbbell design was considered an improvement over the then widespread "railroad" tenement, which had no space at all between adjacent units.
The dumbbell design was squeezed in the middle to permit a narrow air shaft (with windows) between each pair of structures. Since the air shaft was totally inaccessible (no doors opened into it), five stories high, and usually piled high with garbage, it was not a pleasant space, to say the least.
[There is an access door at the bottom of this shaft. - Dave]
The air shaft utterly failed to achieve its purpose of providing direct sunlight and fresh air to the interior rooms of the tenements. The dumbbell tenement became the standard design in New York as a result of New York State's Tenement House Act of 1879 (the "Old Law"); it was then rendered obsolete by the "New Law" of 1901.
Note to Dave: That wooden board at the bottom of the stairwell, which is barely one foot wide in my estimation, does not look like an access door to me. There are bricks visible behind it. Are you referring to something else?
(The Gallery, Edwin Rosskam, NYC)

Where Elsie Met Her End
... thinking about this. I'm not very familiar with tenement buildings but is it possible that the two photos show opposite ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/07/2011 - 10:38pm -

"House in which Miss Sigel was killed." The building at 782 Eighth Avenue in New York where the body of Elsie Sigel was found in a trunk. Click here for another view (of different buildings?) and more information on a very cold case from 1909. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.
I don't think the two photos are the same buildings...The descriptions don't necessarily jibe with each other ("house in which [she] was killed" and "mission where [she] met her slayer"), plus the addresses don't match in the photos. The block in this photo is still numbered in the 780s. The fire station at the left in this photo (at 786?) is now at the address 782 Eighth Ave. in an ugly 1970s building (see Google street view) which leads me to guess that the street numbers didn't change. The addresses in the other photo seem to be #10 & #12 of whatever street.
[Address numbers can change. There's a bigger difference. Who can spot it? - Dave]
You can see a policeman inYou can see a policeman in the right window, top floor.
I'm always wondering about the awnings people used to have commonly in NYC.
I always think of how sooty and filthy they must have become.  Why were they so omnipresent?  Weren't tenements usually pretty light-challenged already?
Curious.
Nice catch......of the policeman in the window.
As far as the awnings, it looks like (at least in the building on the left, #784) that the awnings folded in which would allow more light in.
heatthe sun can really heat up a room in the summer, the awnings would block the sun when needed
Dave said..."There's aDave said..."There's a bigger difference. Who can spot it?"
Not sure what you are referring to or what the difference is, but curious to hear more.
Unless I'm mistaken,street levels didn't change a whole 1/2 floor between these two photographs. The first photograph of the "mission" has stairs to enter from street level, and the ground floor levels of the neighboring buildings vary. In the second photograph, all the buildings have ground floors at the same level. And since the surrounding buildings are different in each photo, it makes no sense that everything except this one building would have been torn down, re-built (in similar mish-mash style) and the street level raised. Much more likely that they are simply 2 different buildings.
One more thingThe Hell's Kitchen building has 3 windows across. This building has 2 windows across. Yep, totally different buildings. 
Worst shingle location everLook at the cornice of #784. The pawnbroker has hung out his symbol (the three balls) 5 stories up. 
In memory of Elsie Sigel....Putting aside in the moment the mobid reason for which the photo was originally taken, the photo is a fascinating study ---- it seems to resemble the backdrop of a theatical backdrop, what a mix of interaction and artistry ---- quality of workmanship and pride is reflected in the delicate delivery wagon's commercial script "Fruits and Vegetables", what elegance rarely seen nowadays it seems....if it wasn't for poor Elsie's demise, this photo may never have been taken, a toast to her memory....
Let's play semantic variablesThinking at first that the same hand marking both photos called into question the accuracy of the reporter, I looked again at what the text actually said. This photo is captioned "the house where Miss Sigel was killed"; the other photo is labeled where "she met her killer." Not only does this indicate these are separate locations, but that there may have been a length of time between meeting her killer and the event of her murder... and that I'm expending too much time thinking about this.
I'm not very familiar with tenement buildingsbut is it possible that the two photos show opposite sides of the same building?
The bigger differenceI think these are two different locations, how more different can they get?
I do see a resemblance, there's 'chop suey' in both pics.
I think k2 is right- 'whereI think k2 is right- 'where she met her killer" isn't necessarily where she was killed.  This story probably ran for a few days in the papers, and they delved into the backstory, including different places she was, leading up to the murder.
FDNY still thereI think it's pretty cool that FDNY's Ladder 4 (along with Engine 54) is still occupying the far left corner building 98 years later. (Perhaps that's Miss Sigel's ghost standing in the middle of the street, staring right at the photographer - good way to start a ghost legend!)
DifferencesThe lack of trolley tracks in front of the 'mission' picture is a pretty large clue they are different locations (although the picture just might not be of a wide enough view).  The copious amount of ironwork lacking in the murder location photo, the wider sidewalks, and the taller buildings are other clues not yet mentioned that they are different sites.
Some early Curtiss motorcycles can be seen here.  Some Curtiss motorcycles can bring upwards of $200,000 when sold.
There is also a Glenn H. Curtiss Museum.
(The Gallery, G.G. Bain, NYC)

Here Lived Paul Revere: 1900
... until 1800, when it was about 120 years old. It became a tenement with shops and businesses (including cigar makers). As the DPC photo ... times as a "sailor’s boarding house... immigrant tenement...candy store, cigar factory, Italian bank, and vegetable and fruit ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/25/2023 - 9:45pm -

Boston, 1900. "Home of Paul Revere, North Square." The British were coming, and the Italians, too. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size.
Precarious history with a happy endingPaul Revere owned the house until 1800, when it was about 120 years old. It became a tenement with shops and businesses (including cigar makers). As the DPC photo shows, this situation continued for a century. In 1895 a plaque was installed by the Daughters of the American Revolution. But evidently the house was in worse condition than appears in the 1900 photo. 
A fire in 1901 (caused by a kerosene lamp being used to ripen bananas) brought attention to the precarious situation. In 1902, Paul Revere’s great-grandson John Phillips Reynolds Jr. bought the building for $12,000. However, terms of the sale allowed a vegetable and fruit seller to finish out the lease on her premises, which expired in 1905. A group of Revere descendants, preservationists, and officials formed the Paul Revere Memorial Association, which bought the house and began restoration in 1907. It opened to the public the next year.
A place for flowersAt corner of the second floor, building on the left, perched in what seems a precarious way, a flowerpot with some small blossoms. Daisies, perhaps?
Che dolce!
Revered LocationThis photo shows one of the last uses of the Paul Revere House before it was made into a museum. After the Revere's moved away, the house served at different times as a "sailor’s boarding house... immigrant tenement...candy store, cigar factory, Italian bank, and vegetable and fruit business. Two years after this photo, Revere's great-grandson bought the house and raised funds to open the museum by1908. The restoration removed the third story extension to return it to the way it was in Revere's time.

More about the Revere House in the 19th centuryI recently read an interesting "virtual exhibit" about the excavation of a mid-19th-century privy behind the Revere House including some history of perhaps the owners immediately previous to these folks (they sold the building in 1891), who ran the building as a saloon and boardinghouse. (The exhibit also covers a nearby house that was operated as a brothel during the same time period.)
https://express.adobe.com/page/ds0d66bbCusvJ/ - A Tale of Two Privies
Sixscore-plus years ago ... Cigars and Dispatches home to Italy were the thing. 
Welcome to Boston! Today, it is a museum and a big stop along the Freedom Trail. The trail is quite the tour of the historic sites in Boston. It can be done in a day, but you can probably get more out of it in two. The North End is about halfway through. Most folks start it at the Commons and walk north. The city has even laid out the trail in bricks and cobblestones so you can follow without relying on a map or phone.
If you're in shape and want to walk the trail in a day, the North End is well-placed for a midday meal ... it's the neighborhood for delicious Italian fare - home to the best pizza anywhere in New England (look for the intersection of Thatcher and N. Margin). 
Here is a page for the house itself: https://www.paulreverehouse.org/
Happy summer vacation planning ... and one more thing: save the money and don't rent a car - you won't need or want one!
Traditional Sicilian SaluteTwo of the cheeky little scamps are giving the photographer the "up yours" gesture.  I haven't seen that in awhile -- though it brought a smile to my face.
(The Gallery, Boston, DPC, Kids)

Manhattan Skyline: 1915
... perhaps, piecework to help keep the family in food and tenement rent. No time for the luxury of worry. And those windows would have ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 4:25pm -

New York circa 1915. "New York skyline from Manhattan Bridge." Another entry from Detroit Publishing's series of sooty cityscapes. View full size.
BuildingsOn the far right is the Municipal Building, and to its left is the Woolworth Building.
A modern viewHere's a shot from a nearby location 100 years later.
Merchants
Chambers Printing Company
S. Giuseppe
Uneeda Biscuit

And nowA view from the bridge.
Where it isThe cross street in the foreground is Market, in what used to be Little Italy, now Chinatown. What are the two streets heading downtown? There is no wedge-shaped block like this on Market today.
What a pole!As a straight razor guy and a collector of things tonsorial, my eye was immediately drawn to, what I believe is, that great barber pole at the bottom of the photo. It looks to be part barber pole and part flag pole. I'd give my brother's right arm to have one like that.
Pineapple TowersGreat skyline picture especially especially juxtaposed behind the everyday market street at the bottom. Can anyone supply names for all those massive buildings? -- especially the one that looks like it's wearing a pineapple on top.
[The pineapple is the Singer Building. - Dave]
Hey KidCareful on that fire escape!
Madison StreetThat's Madison Street with the Alfred E. Smith Houses on the left and Chatham Green apartments on the right.
Are you sure this photo is from 1910?because The Equitable Building wasn't completed until 1915 ... and construction of the Woolworth Building was just starting in 1910.
["Circa 1910" does not mean the picture was taken in 1910. If we knew what year the photo was taken, we'd give it. "Circa" means around -- in the general vicinity. It's a starting point. - Dave]
FluffyzillaIt's not a giant lizard, a flying turtle or even the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, but every time I look at this portion of the photo, I see a giant bunny between the buildings, peacefully nibbling its way through the city.

Today's ViewI used Google Earth 3D buildings to align the vantage point and then looked at Street View. The buildings match (look at the one the horse is headed toward, and also the building on the block closer to the camera with arched windows).
View Larger Map
Make that New York c. 1915This magnificent view contains several skyscrapers completed after 1910. On the left we see the Bankers Trust Building, with the pyramid on top (finished 1912) and immediately to its right, the wide bulk of the new Equitable Building (finished 1915); on the right we see the Woolworth Building, the tallest in the world at that time (finished 1913) and the Municipal Building, with its cute little round temple at the top (finished 1914).
TrystLove blooms above the city's streets.  Nice 
Monroe StreetThis is a view looking up Monroe Street with Market in the foreground. NYCer's image is nearby looking up Madison Street with Market in the foreground.
Here's One MoreThe very white building in the middle background with the American flag waving above it is the first section of the old AT&T Building at 195 Broadway, which was completed in 1916 (the second section - not seen here - was completed in 1922).
Still ThereIf I've got it right, these two buildings are still there but now surrounded by even bigger buildings.  Amazing.
[These are the Bankers Trust and Equitable buildings. - Dave]
Where it isThe exact location is the intersection of Monroe and Market streets looking west. The first picture submitted by nycer as well as the one directly above is along Madison Street, which is one block north of Monroe. The wedge shaped block was created by Monroe and Hamilton streets. Hamilton was eliminated with the construction of the Knickerbocker Village housing project in 1934. I have a site devoted in large part to the history of this project:
http://knickerbockervillage.blogspot.com
Between Monroe and CherryI think the street to the left is Monroe. The street to the right is the unnamed street circled in the map below, in between Monroe and Cherry. That would mean S. Giuseppe's store is on Catherine Street. 
Most of it is gone. It's all large apartment buildings on the south side of Monroe and the West side of Catherine. The buildings on the North side of Monroe are still there.
+99This is the same view west on Monroe Street from May of 2009.  The building in the right foreground remains as do its chimneys which are now covered in graffiti or hidden by transmitters.  
Laundry LadyI smiled when I saw the woman on the roof hanging her wet laundry out to dry! I'm afraid I would be scared to death!
Zero'th SisterI was going to mention the interesting similarity of the building below to Moscow's "Seven Sisters," a series of wedding-cake architectural extravagances from the Stalinist era. Then I read the Wikipedia article on Stalin's buildings!
"The Manhattan Municipal Building in New York City, completed in 1915, is reportedly an architectural precursor to the Seven Sisters."
We spent a night in the Hotel Ukraina some years back. Lovely building, but very old, and to paraphrase Mark Twain, "The hottest Summer I ever spent was a Winter's night in Moscow!" 15 degrees outside, 85 inside.
[That's the Woolworth Building below. - Dave]
High and DryThis gal is just merrily hanging out her laundry with nothing between her and a fast free-fall but a few live wires! At my place of work I couldn't go higher than a common step ladder without a climbing harness and a spotter. Seems to me they worried a lot less back then and didn't try to turn everything into a liability lawsuit.
Market, Monroe and HamiltonThe original photo shows the intersection of these three streets. Hamilton Street (the one with the bend in the middle) was demapped in the early 1930s when Knickerbocker Village was built (see first photo in comments). That development was opened in 1934. At the foot of Monroe Street in the original photo there is a building marked "S. Giuseppe." That was the original St. Joseph's Church. The current structure was built in 1923 at the corner of Monroe and Catherine Streets across from the original site.
First time I ever saw a photo of Hamilton Street, great find!
My Best ShotHere is another view of the skyline in a photo I took Oct 4, 2009 from the Manhattan Bridge. I was attending the celebration of the Bridge's 100th Anniversary.
So muchfor previous claims posted here on Shorpy that cities one hundred years ago were neat, clean and litter-free.
A hot dayDid anybody else notice how most of the people on the street are crowded into the shade?
This helicopter mom is nervousAbout that child on the fire escape, who looks to be about 3 or 4 years old. That's five storeys up.  Such a different world. Or, perhaps, such a different economic perspective from my middle class complacency.  Mom was probably overwhelmed with six or seven kids, the housework and cooking and, perhaps, piecework to help keep the family in food and tenement rent. No time for the luxury of worry.  And those windows would have to be wide open in a stifling upper storey building.
Black MariaWhat's amazing is the ominous woman striding down the left-side street dressed literally head to toe in black on this seemingly warm spring or summer day. Complete with black hat. We will never know her tragic mission; what dark news she's about to deliver to some poor soul in one of those buildings.
Biggest ChangeMy father was born in Manhattan in 1918, and died in January 2009 at the age of 90. He was raised in Greenwich Village and except for 10 years spent in Europe, he lived his entire life in Manhattan. He saw almost all of the evolution of New York during the 20th Century.
Shortly before his death I asked him what he thought was the greatest general change in New York since he was a kid. Immediately he said "The greenery ! New York is so green now! There are so many trees! When I was a kid New York was a dirty and grimy place with almost no greenery, and very few of the side streets had any trees in them. Certainly not in working class neighborhoods. If you wanted trees you went to the park. That's definitely the biggest change."
This is borne out by all these comparative pictures; not a tree in sight in 1915.
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC)

Bliss: 1901
... to a prejudiced portrayal. Look at some of Hine's tenement photos and the descriptions he provides for them and you will not get ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/20/2011 - 2:59pm -

Circa 1901. The caption here is just like a watermelon, short and sweet: "Bliss." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
I've been a faithfulI've been a faithful follower of Shorpy for over a year, but the repeated selection of these images with anti-Black stereotypes is making me reconsider that decision.  I'm a trained archivist and researcher, and am fully aware of the history and meanings of such images. I'm also a Black American and each time I see one of these images on what used to be a favorite photo site, I feel slightly ill. Black people may have posed for these photographs and participated in the making of negative images, but there have always been people who opposed them (for example, organized protests in response to D. W. Griffiths' 'Birth of a Nation' and Oscar Micheaux' creation of a film in response). 
Censorship isn't what I'm advocating here, but I do wonder: what is the purpose? When such images are presented without context or additional historical information, the stereotypes are revived and the cycle starts all over again. 
It's hard not to feel a bit betrayed.  I've commented before on some of the more dignified images presented here, such as Black Americans participating in the war effort, or pictured in the daily life of towns and industries.  Even when the photos are painful to see (that image of French performer Polaire with her 'slave' servant, for example), we can learn from them.  However, these were/are vicious, persistent stereotypes: dice playing, watermelon. Surely the editors of Shorpy have seen the widely circulated Internet meme with an image depicting an 'Obama White House' with watermelons on the lawn? This type of racism isn't dead.
I used to recommend Shorpy to all sorts of people. I may take a break and just go straight to the LoC Prints & Photographs Division for my personal browsing instead of making my daily visit here -- at least there's a bit more context. 
I really would appreciate it if someone at Shorpy would address the question of why the dice and watermelon images were selected.  Yes, they are part of our history, but they are not at all benign.
[I thought they were interesting. This one in particular because we're having a heat wave. Below: More craps-shooting and watermelon-eating on Shorpy. - Dave]



Spittin' happyYou know, there's not much that cools you down quicker on a hot day than eating watermelon. I wonder what those kids would think of today's seedless watermelons? 
Why a duck?Maybe the barrel was the duck's evening quarters.  When I was a kid we had neighbors who kept a chicken in a bushel basket at night.
And the little duck too. Stereotypical or not, these boys are enjoying themselves. One eating the melon; the other runnning up to see what the other (brother?) is doing? Perhaps it was staged. But there seems no exploitation. These kids are average looking kids of the American South, and are happy. It is refreshing to see. I also like the little duck waddling up, as if he too wants to get a slice of that juicy melon. 
Please People: It’s 1901.Those fellows are not "stereotypes," they are REAL! (and enjoying reality too)
WatermelonYecch, hated it as a kid and I never did develop a taste for it. The seeds are a pain in the neck too.
Summertime joyWhat a beautiful, natural smile on the face of the standing boy, he looks like a young and beaming Michael Jackson.  As for the lad engrossed in his snack sitting on the crate, he reminds me of the commercial saying "Don't bother me, I'm eating."   When I saw the title "Bliss" I thought it was going to be the now-famous Bill Bliss of Shorpy fame, but he was not around in 1901. This photo takes us all back, I'm lovin' it.
Just a guessThis photo "op" was set up by the photographer.
I'm StumpedI've been puzzling over what the one dozen cast iron items that were in the crate that one of the boys is sitting on, might have been.  They began with the letter F.
[Feeders. - Dave]
StereotypicalWe saw in another picture black kids playing dice for money, and now we see them eating watermelon.  What is next? Dancing a jig? These pictures seem to show the stereotypes of the age in which they were taken.
Same day (or week), different boysI was hoping this was going to be of the same boys as the one from the other day, but these little boys are cute, too.  They are certainly much more ragged than the other boys, but I am happy to be able to share in a happy moment in their lives.   
P.S.
I believe the old adage,"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Pictures like this are a reminder of how far we've come, and evidence that we can continue to make progress. Those four little boys were photographed doing things that, granted, could be construed as perpetuating stereotypes, but have been taken part in and enjoyed by Americans everywhere. I don't deny that the photographer may have brought the watermelon to the boys and set up the photo, but I agree with Caseyshebascott, that it doesn't look like they were being exploited. 
Because of their race, we know that their lives were going to be hard. One of the main things I love about photographs is that it is an opportunity to remember people who lived before us. Looking at pictures of moments in their lives is, I think, a tribute to them. I think the boys in this and the other picture would be thrilled to know that there are people remembering and caring about them, 110 years later! The intent of the photographer for the pictures does not change the fact that those pictures are a gift to us, now.  
One last thing; this is not the picture that I expected this kind of discussion from. This https://www.shorpy.com/node/10653 was. I cried over that one, to see that man, whose life we know, for sure, was very hard, treated like that, and for that reason! It reminded me of the horrible lynchings that used to take place, as recently as 50 years ago, and how thankful I am that my two black sons, and my biracial grandson, are not in danger of such a thing.
Raggedy clothesI know people have commented on some of the raggedy clothes in this picture and others. 
As the mother of an active boy about the same age, I just have to say healthy boys play rough. Even in this day where buying new clothes is easy and cheaper, my son will come home filthy and have ripped his clothes. 
When I know he is going to play rough, I ask him to wear old stuff to spare the relatively useful outfits. 
Come to think of it, I was pretty rough and tumbled as a little girl too!
ThxI will admit I cringed a little when I first saw this picture. Thanks for posting those white pics and putting things into perspective.
Lighten upThese are archival photos. I seriously doubt the photog at the time was wondering thru his viewfinder, "Geez, I bet this is will somehow be construed as a negative stereotypical image that I'm creating and in 100 years I will be lambasted for such by overly sensitive types in USA."
Like Sgt. Hulka once said, "Lighten up"
Heat index is 115 right nowI would be delighted if someone would offer me a nice slice of watermelon right now.  And that would be equally true whatever my skin color happened to be.  Some people are much too quick to seek offense where none is intended.
JeezThank God someone asked about the "cast iron feeders." At least some people aren't ticked off about black folks enjoying watermelon.
Acquired by artLooks to me that the watermelon belongs to the boy that's seated, eating, and that the other boy is helping himself.  Made me think of lines from Twain's autobiography:
I know how a prize watermelon looks when it is sunning its fat rotundity among pumpkin vines and "simblins"; I know how to tell when it is ripe without "plugging" it; I know how inviting it looks when it is cooling itself in a tub of water under the bed, waiting; I know how it looks when it lies on the table in the sheltered great floor space between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front if the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, a luxury fit for the elect; I know how a boy looks behind a yard-long slice of that melon, and I know how he feels; for I have been there. I know the taste of the watermelon which has been honestly come by, and I know the taste of the watermelon which has been acquired by art. Both taste good, but the experienced know which tastes best.
I Disagree With GumbogirlYes the image is stereotypic but it is also interesting, and as historically significant as any other image on this site.  We understand the context and the times of the image.  Thanks and keep'em coming.
StereotypesI've also enjoyed this website for a long time, but presenting this picture as if it is just any other picture is not right.  A picture of black people with watermelons is never an innocent picture.  Along with numerous other racist images, from at least the mid-nineteenth century to the present day it's signified that African Americans are inherently lazy, child-like, improvident, and ultimately morally deficient in order to dehumanize them so that they can be denied political rights. That image isn't somehow balanced by showing pictures of raggedy white boys playing dice or white farm families enjoying watermelon because white people have never been denied political rights because of their race.  Pictures of white boys eating watermelon aren't equivalent to pictures of black boys eating watermelon.   It also doesn't matter if someone claims to see this image in a "positive" way because that history is always present and has meaning in society, whether or not any one individual chooses to recognize it.  Presenting this kind of image without somehow dealing with its history just ends up perpetuating the stereotype and shoring up its purposes.  This website isn't set up to be critical or analytical--it's a place where people can look at miscellaneous pictures of buildings and people and whatever from the past, make the pictures big and look for interesting details.  To put that picture in this setting without discussion or comment  is erasing its history, which is a bad idea considering how widespread this kind of stereotyping of African Americans and other groups still is in our society.
Tempest in a TeapotI've been looking at this blog with great interest and affection for quite some time, but never felt the need to comment until now.
What I love about this blog is that it is a look at the American Century: it is a view of our past.  To look at a 1901 image and declaim racism with 2011 eyes is not only ridiculous sophistry, but flummery as well.  These images are part of the American experience and, in that context, these children certainly look very happy.  Certainly happier than many inner-city children of today look.
As for slavery-guilt, I feel none.  I am English, so my ancestors were enslaved by the Romans, denied the same rights in the political process as American blacks were here at home.  However, I have somehow managed forgive Italians, and quite enjoy myself whenever visiting Rome.  
Grow up, people.
[There's a bit of a difference between 2,000 years ago and one great-grandma ago. - Dave]
Should have enlarged it firstI concede.  It's a duck, not a chicken.  
Hang in there, GumbogirlIt's so subtle, I would bet that the photographer was oblivious to the stereotype, as most white people are today. I would argue that it is even more subtle now, since so much racist art has been systematically destroyed. It bothered me too, a little, and I'm white, for whatever that's worth. 
Check here and here for some shots of an integrated 1890s US Navy, before Klan sympathizer Woodrow Wilson segregated all branches of the service. Those are just the shots that come to my mind at the moment.
Shorpy gives us history unfiltered. It's up to the community to provide the context.
Don't perpetuate the stereotypes!Don't form your opinions from 110 year old photos.  Instead, form your opinions based on the condition of most of America's inner-cities.
Aw nuts...Here I was enjoying the memory of how my brother used to somehow manage to snatch up half of all my treats (watermelon, candy, cupcakes) when we were youn'uns. Then I started reading the comments and remembered there's supposed to be something inherently evil and racsist about 2 black kids eating watermelon on a hot summer day. 
Welp... so much for nostalgia. Back to the real world.
WahI would give a lot to be as happy and content as these fellows look. I believe it to be genuine. This photo struck me as life in a less complicated time. Stereotype? Possibly, but so what. I guess crybabies gonna cry.
Right on, LectrogeekI like the comment about Shorpy giving us "history unfiltered." Trying to ignore the subject matter of a particular photo, regardless of whether it offends our 21st century sensibilities, isn't going to change what happened back in the day. Let's hope, however, that we can all learn from that history and therefore ensure that it doesn't repeat itself.
As far as this being a part of our history we'd rather forget, how about the photos of dead Civil War soldiers in the trenches around Petersburg (also to be found here on Shorpy)? Is a photo of a dead Confederate soldier, lying in the mud with half his head blown off, any less disturbing? Even as an avid Civil War buff, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of Americans killing Americans, even if it did happen 150 years ago. But it's history, and we move on, and learn as we go. 
StereotypesTo not show photos such as this and have reasoned discussions about them would be "erasing the history."
When I worked at a certain children's museum and we were preparing for the opening, I was asked to put together a range of stereoscopic photos so that the children could view them. I carefully eliminated the obviously racist ones - like series of views "Mrs. Newlywed's new French Cook" where the wife catches her husband messing with the French cook and replaces her with

Amongst the ones I selected was a photo of a Japanese woman in her kimono looking at the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake. This was eliminated by the curator because of its "racist content". Firstly, I felt that it wasn't "racist" it showed someone who lived in San Francisco wearing, as many Japanese people in San Francisco of the day did, her normal clothes. Secondly, I felt that it revealed to children that there were people other than white people in San Francisco at that time.
As it happened, in order to "not present ethnic stereotypes" NONE of the images in the children's museum depicted any but white people...
The powers that be decided that in order to prevent any inadvertent "racist depictions", they would completely eliminate images of people of colour entirely.
If Dave starts eliminating historical photos which accurately depict attitudes, even what people in the day didn't overtly see as "racist" or "stereotypical" we'd have photos which exclusively present white males, buildings, and landscapes. The fact is that many of the images of women seen here, especially in the 1920s and 1930s depict stereotypical images of scantily-clad women which were taken basically to titillate men. I would no more, as a woman, expect that they be removed because they might be seen as raising an "uncomfortable" discussion.
As it happens, the great number of collectors of artifacts and ephemera with "stereotypical" depictions of African Americans from bygone days is African Americans. In collecting these items, they are making a concerted effort to ensure that the attitudes of the past, as offensive as they may be, are not whitewashed over.
--- Later...
I would like to add that I understand that there are varying viewpoints on whether the image posted by Dave is "offensive". The point I would like to make is that, as has been shown by some of the comments, many people are unaware that depictions of African Americans eating watermelon might have stereotypical connotations. Seeing such images and understanding that, however subtle, such imagery was the result of more overt and widespread racial attitudes.
I should also point out that the image I posted above was one of a number of "alternative endings" for the "Mrs. Newlywed's new French Cook". The last image was photographed with at least two other characters in place of the "lazy black cook" image - A fat "ethnic (possibly Italian) woman, for instance - to cater to the buyer's taste (or prejudice).
I am in no way suggesting that someone who finds the images offensive is wrong. My view is that people who come to Shorpy do so because we want to see the past through the eyes of our parents and grandparents, even when that view makes us uncomfortable.
Chill outI think there's a lot of misplaced guilt on parade here. Until I read all the remarks, the old stereotypes never even occurred to me. I just thought it looked like two kids having fun.
[Different people will have different perspectives. If your ancestors were brought to this country against their will as slaves, and their descendants objectified as "cute" (mammies and "pickaninnies" lumped in the same category as puppies and kittens, in a sort of racist kitsch that's become "collectible" on eBay), you might understandably have some opinions about pictures like this. - Dave]
Regardless of the eraYou never wear the cap with the bill straight ahead!
Aw GeezSome people here need to get a life.
Just Sayin'.
Great discussionThere is a great dialog here and a good illustration of why it's so important to study history and understand context.
Thanks, Dave, for posting all the pictures you do, but mostly for also posting the comments--pro and con--about the content on this excellent site.
What is so racist about watermelon?I can't say I've ever seen a black person eating one.
Dave?What makes you think my ancestors weren't bought and sold as slaves?
[Nothing does. - Dave]
I get such a laugh from allI get such a laugh from all of this. Especially from all of you self righteous people who feel that this is a derogatory photo. First of all, do you know where stereotypes come from? ….well, they’re formed from observations.  And as far as the political repression of minorities…do you really think that this photo has anything to do with that? I mean really…..where does that even come from? I think that you look at this photo and you are feeling something that doesn’t really exist. “You” are making this into some crazy statement….and no-one else.
Do you feel that we should get rid of any photo that may be offensive to someone? Or only the ones that “you” feel are negative? If you erase or deny the past, you will loose the link to how we got to where we are today. There were an awful lot of white people who risked everything that they had, including their lives, to make sure that blacks would get an even shake in this world, and now 150 years later there are still people standing up for you. Somewhere along the line this fact seems to be forgotten. Every chance that you get…you call foul. Just knock it off already, it’s a photo, not a political statement.
[It might be instructive to scroll down and read Gumbogirl's comment first, then this one, and weigh them separately on the Reasonableness Scale. I am not getting a reading up here. Tap tap tap. - Dave]
Thank youThank you to Dave for a charming photo and to Mudhooks for your eloquent comment. Revisionist history is a dangerous thing. 
White Washing HistoryI've been reading the comments on this issue, and I can see both sides. The image does have racist overtones. You can bet that the photographer knew exactly what he was shooting when he took this picture of two Black kids and the watermelon, and I have no doubt that he might have used terms a lot more offensive than Black, Negro or even "colored." And it's not something that went away easily. I have a National Geographic from the 1930s that shows a raggedly dressed African American youth sitting on a wagon load of watermelons having a slice and wearing a big grin on his face. Eddie Anderson whose character of Rochester was, at the time, considered a major step forward in portrayal of Blacks in the media was regularly portrayed as shooting dice, partying non-stop on Central Avenue (in Los Angeles), stealing chickens and wanting to grown nothing but watermelon.
But the fact is that photos like these are a documentation of their times and those times were a prejudiced period. And not just towards African-Americans. Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians (usually defined generically as Chinese) and whatever the current wave of immigrants might have been were also subjected to a prejudiced portrayal. Look at some of Hine's tenement photos and the descriptions he provides for them and you will not get a very negative view of new Italian immigrants. 
My view is that you can't set aside pictures like these to see only the "comfortable" vision of history that shows only positive images. You need to approach it "warts and all" and part of that is seeing the warts. Most importantly you have to talk about it and put it into context. That's the only way that things advance.
Surprisingly thought provokingAlthough Dave's intent to simply post a light-hearted summer scene was clear, at first I was slightly uncomfortable with the stereotypes portrayed in the staging of this photo.  Fortunately, the way commenters brought up and discussed the racial context reminded me what a educational resource this site is, thanks to the engaged community Dave has attracted.
Years ago, seeing the simple minded racism of blackface and mammy figures etc. with descriptions of their historical context forever changed my views on race in America.  As awful as the racist ideas and caricatures of our grandparents' time were, doesn't pretending they never existed make it harder for modern people to put current racial problems into proper perspective?  
The Mark Twain quote was a perfect fit with both the scene as well as the problem of presenting America's racial history honestly and sensitively, given the recent debates over the dialects and characters in some of his books.  Would we be better off today if we banned Huckleberry Finn because we cringe at its period language and imagery?
We know African Americans of this time were subject to incredibly stupid racist ideas and behaviors.  That shouldn't make us erase people like these kids from our national memory.  The children in this picture lived in an unjust time, but they deserve to be remembered today as much as any white kids on Shorpy. The alternative - banning another period picture because racism was so prevalent - doesn't serve history or modernity well.
I think Dave and the community here did well by these kids and the issues this photo raised.
Shorpy UnfilteredI'm new to Shorpy but I'm now hooked, even going backwards in the archive from the first post to catch up!
I enjoy the unfiltered view of the past that we get on this site. We get to see photos taken through contemporary eyes of the day, like we're stepping through a time machine. 
Of course, those eyes may have been accustomed to things being a way that they aren't necessarily anymore, or are now deemed unacceptable by many. If someone is overly sensitive to these things, which Gumbogirl or bmore may be, then a site full of old photos may not be for them. 
You can count me in to the group that never thought of any racial stereotyping when I saw this photo. I can see how some might, but again... even IF the photo was composed with racism in mind (which we will never know), the era the photo was taken in must be considered. Myself, all I see is two kids enjoying watermelon on a hot day.
Finally, I fully agree with Dave that each picture is interpreted differently by each person... and that's what makes them special and causes them to invoke discussion. I get disgusted by things like racist WWII propaganda posters but hey, it is what it is.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigarAnd sometimes, when you've typed the subject line, you discover there isn't much more to say.
One of the things I really love about Shorpyis that although there are clearly 2 different schools of thought on this picture all the comments are clearly thought out, reasonable and respectful. Maybe a couple little pokes here and there, but no personal attacks or hatred. That's exceedingly rare for anything on this topic on the web.
[That's partly because we don't publish those comments. - Dave]
Maybe it's 'cause I'm Canadianbut I completely missed the stereotype that is so upsetting to some.  I had no idea that associating black people with watermelon could be offensive.
When I looked at the picture of boys and their snack, it was a picture of joy.  When my eye first caught mudhooks' picture of "the new French cook" (before reading the captions) it was a picture of a woman playing a mandolin.
Like I say, maybe it's because I'm not American and our experience around slavery is different, or maybe it's because the world has changed and is closer to a time when people are just people, but I just don't get what the problem is.
As someone has said, if you're looking for trouble, look at how things are in the inner-cities today and do something about it.
re: "One of the things I really love about Shorpy"Then that's one of the things I really love about YOU, Dave. I guess it was naive of me to assume no one submits such comments here. Thank you for culling those out; that's mighty refreshing. One of the many, MANY reasons I make time to visit this site at LEAST once a day. You are appreciated.
Slice of LifeI love these old photographs, thanks Dave for sharing them with us. I can see how a boy eating watermelon could push someone's buttons, but honestly, how much poorer would we all be if we could not see this photo, this brief window of this era and these two kids?
ReliefI haven't visited for a while and pictures like this and the seaside pics help take away some of the opressive heat that's all around.  Boy, do love watermelon! 
No bad intentI doubt if there was any bad intent from posting this photo. It just is what it is. It is a part of the culture at the time. Being a historian, no one should try to squelch any part of history, bad or good. It all teaches us. On top of that, this a a nice photo! Two kids just enjoying summer's bounty! For anyone to read any more into it is racist in itself. 
Watermelon daysWell this calls for a story. When I was a child in the District, we still had watermelon carts with horses.  It would come down our street once maybe twice a week.  My grandmother usually couldn't afford one, but every now and again she would surprise us.  If we saw her at the watermelon truck we would wait patiently, until we saw the watermelon man hand her the goods.  Then we would jump up and down, sing with glee and dance.  There would be all kinds of carryins on. We would follow Grandma to the back of the house, our camp ground in the alley, "Grandma can I have a big piece" please? When we were done, we would play until dark.  Then we would go to bed with sweet dreams of that beautiful fruit.  Our hearts would swell because we knew Grandma loved us more that anything in the world.  Just a simple watermelon story for y'all!       
PostcardPostcard version:
(The Gallery, DPC, Kids)

Bathgate Avenue: 1936
... and as well Mr. Cherry's grocery store. 1595 was another tenement. After a few shops, there was a Woolworth's, a drug store and Meyers ... which more shops and at the end of the block 1599, another tenement. Further down from the other side of Gellers, a huge poultry store. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/30/2012 - 10:50am -

December 1936. "Scene along Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx, a section from which many of the New Jersey homesteaders have come." View full size. Medium format nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration.
Nothing really changesFunny, I've seen scenes just like this (with different languages on the signs and different clothes) in Cueramaro, GTO and Oakland, CA within the last few months. We don't really change as much as we think sometimes...
Billy BathgateI lived on Bathgate and 187th four years ago when I went to school at Fordham.  Looking at the address on the bulding I wonder what the cross-street was at this time?
The one little boyThe one little boy appears to be carrying a toy airplane while the stroller has a piece of wood being used to keep it from rolling away.
TK
http://unidentifiedfamilyobjects.blogspot.com/
Bathgate AvenueI googled the address and it is shown to be between Claremont Parkway and East 172nd Street. It was never considered a Garden Spot.
Pop vs sodaThis shows that the word "pop" was still in use in NYC at that time, with the word "soda" presumably meaning an ice cream soda.  The word "soda" has all but obliterated "pop" for soft drink in most of the country now. If you still say "pop" you're really from the hinterlands. 
Bathgate AvenueI used to go shopping on Bathgate Avenue with my mother in the early 1950's. I was still a kid and it was an exciting place. Open display cases in front of the stores, the smells of dried fish and ethnic foods baking in the sun. The area was much more crowded in the 1950's. If I remember correctly there were still some pushcarts in those days. Bathgate Avenue is near Crotona Park.
BathgateI lived across the street from this address at 1599 Bathgate  Avenue in the late 60's thru the mid 70's and my fondest memories were that of Melvin's Eggs right next to this location. This store was right in the middle of the block. Next door to me was F.W. Woolworth. The Manager was Mr.Blackman, funny how some names you never forget. The cross street was Claremont Avenue and that was 172nd street. The next street over was Washington Avenue and the Deluxe Theatre, where I went to my first movie by myself for 35 cents. Gosh I feel old and I'm only 46.
Great times playing stickball and kick the can on Sundays, everything was closed because of the Blue Laws.
Tone2020@gmail.com
Pop vs Soda MapSee this site.
Bathgate Avenue ShoppingI lived on Washington Avenue during the same timeframe (mid 60s through late 70s) and can remember a poultry shop where you could buy freshly slaughtered (right in front of you) chicken.  Also, the smell of roasted peanuts sold from the fruit stands on Bathgate is something I remember.  
My first job while in Junior High was at a small variety store across the street from Woolworth (I can still hear the 3rd Avenue El rattling as it heads towards the Claremont Avenue Station).   
Bathgate AvenueMy grandparents owned a small store called Tillie's Specialty Shop from about 1945 to 1957 on Bathgate Avenue, just next to the stores in the photo and a few doors down from Woolworth's. Tillie's sold housedresses, hosiery, robes, etc. During the summer, when I wasn't attending P.S. 4, I'd sit next to the hosiery display at the front of the store and sell stockings. I also collected baseball cards, which my mother threw out. My guess is that I had a bunch of Mickey Mantles. Wish I still did!
I recall a haberdasher (when was the last time you heard that word?) on the corner of 3rd Avenue and Claremont Parkway. The el still stood then. Crotona Park was two blocks away.
Nice to remember...   
Fond Memories of my youthMy grandparents lived at 1663 Bathgate Avenue and 173rd Street. My grandfather owned a tomato store near the corner of 173rd. I was only a small child then but can remember the delicious smells in the hallway when entering the building from all the cooking.  There was Italian, German, Irish, Greek and Jewish food that created the most wonderful aroma.
I remember all the stores that had their products outside under awnings.  There was clothing, shoes, toys, food, etc.
My mom used to take me to a clothing store south of 173rd on the east side of the street. I remember a heater in the middle of the floor in this clothing store.
I also went to a pool a few blocks away, must have been Crotona Park Wading Pool. I remember the water not being very deep.
For some reason many things have stayed with me and the memories are cherished.
Memories of a fellow Bathgater..I was born in Apartment 4C at 1663 Bathgate, the southwest corner of Bathgate and 173rd, in December 1933. My dad died in 1934.
Vogel's Grocery was on the northwest corner and I delivered groceries for them. Schactner's Haberdashery was opposite 1663 as was the Daitch Dairy. The orthodox synagogue was underneath 1663 on 173rd and Grubmans Interior Decorators was underneath 1663 on Bathgate. (For some unexplained reason the interior decorators' center of NYC was Bathgate between Clairmont Parkway and 173rd, three blocks with about a dozen interior decorator stores. As kids we used to marvel at the chauffeured limousines carrying elegantly dressed ladies from Park & Fifth Avenues in Manhattan to Bathgate to buy extraordinary fabrics for their apartment & mansions.)
Tillie's Specialty Shop may also have been Zweigart's Specialty Shop, whose daughter, Sally, I once dated, when I was a student at P.S. 4 on Fulton Avenue. There were many such shops.
Freshly slaughtered chickens and live pike & carp for Friday night's "gefulte" fish was a given. Mom used to keep the fish alive in the bathtub so we could see them when we came home from school!
Punch ball on 173rd from Bathgate to 3rd Avenue started promptly at 10 every Sunday morning and ended promptly at 2 pm when all the Italian kids had to go home for their traditional Sunday pasta dinner. If there were cars parked on 173rd, we pushed them out of the way. Spectators lined both sides of the street and total bets could be $100 or more.
I could punch a "spaldeen" 3 sewers, but Rocky Colavito, the eventual Cleveland Brown slugger, could punch the ball onto the 3rd Avenue Elevated tracks, almost a whole block away!
Correction: The movie house on Clairmont and Washington Avenue was the Fenway, not the Delux. Admission was five cents and we were there on Saturdays from 11 to 5 -- two feature films and about 25 serials and cartoons.  Our moms came to pull us out for dinner. If you went in the evening, you would also be awarded a free dinner plate. My mom collected an entire service for eight, some of which my niece may still have!
The Delux was at the corner of Arthur & Tremont, also 5 cents. The Crotona on Tremont was 10 cents, the more resplendent Loewe's farther east on Tremont at 15 cents and the famous & magnificent Loewe's Paradise at Grand Concourse and Fordham Road, admission was a hefty 25 cents, but well worth the beauty of that particular movie palace!
I left Bathgate in 1953 to go to college and never returned. I'm 75, but those memories are as fresh in my mind today as though they occurred yesterday.
Please pass on to your Bathgate cohorts !
Fair Winds,
Jack Cook
Reprinted from an email I received today from Jack.
Eat at Paul'sMy grandfather had a deli on Bathgate Avenue. I have a pic taken in 1932. The awning on the store said Eat at Paul's, my grandpa was Henry. That was the way the awning was when he opened the store. Does anyone remember? or know the address number of the store.  I want to see what is on that spot now.
I remember MamaI was born in 1946 and shopped with my mother on Bathgate as a very small child. I remember watching her choose a flounder at the fish market, and kosher pickles from the barrels on the street. One of the women in the Rothstein photo looks just like my grandmother. She shopped there too. What if? 
1593 Bathgate AvenueThe window appearing in the upper right hand corner of the picture is that of a top floor apartment at 1593 Bathgate Avenue. From the early 1940s to the early '60s, our family (Tosca) lived on the first floor (same line as the window) in Apartment 6.
1589 was Geller Bros., a candy stand which in the fifties became somewhat of a supermarket. 1591 was a full fresh fish market, huge water tank and all. The ground floor of 1593 housed a kosher meat market and as well Mr. Cherry's grocery store. 1595 was another tenement. After a few shops, there was a Woolworth's, a drug store and Meyers & Shapiro Deli. After which more shops and at the end of the block 1599, another tenement. Further down from the other side of Gellers, a huge poultry store. With no doubt, hundreds of live chickens daily sold, slaughtered & quartered on the premises. Many many thanks for affording "Junior" the trip down Memory Lane.
1991 BathgateI lived at 1991 Bathgate apt 1A at the end of the 60s into 1976 and I love that neighborhood I still go back there once a year I walk down towards tremont where St josephs church is i had great times there if anyone was from around there at that time email me at bronx1966@hotmail.com
Crotona Park PoolI taught myself to swim in the shallow pool and then was daring enough to dive off the diving board towards the ladder opposite in the semi-circular diving pool. I am 83 and still a good swimmer. I recently found a site where I could see the pool and the shallow one is still active but the diving pool has all the boards gone and a fence around the pool to keep people out! damn lawyers for making an end to diving boards due to  their incessant suits!
Bathgate Avenue1575 Bathgate Avenue, 1946 to 1952: from my grandmother's apartment, I could look across the street and see Daitch Dairy.  Sometimes I would be sent there to get butter.  Then, it came in a large block, and they would chop you off the amount you wanted, either by the amount or amount of money I was given to buy it.
I was never board, after all, I could visit the chickens, watch the fish swim in a tank, go to the deli for chicken salami (which I don't believe is made anymore).  Through my grandmother, the shop keepers knew me, so I always got a slice of salami.  There was Woolworth to walk around in.  The Sugar Bowl for ice cream, the shop around the corner for ices for 5 cents, the leather shop (to smell new leather), and produce stands everywhere.
Loved to go to Crotona Park and climb what I thought then were mountains, but just big boulders.  You could hear and see the world just by sitting at a window, and ride on a merry-go-round that came by on a truck.  Most night the third avenue L put me to sleep.
Everything was simple then, yet an awful lot of fun.  Good memories they were indeed.
Brings tears to my eyesMy Dad and his brothers{ the Geller Bros.} had the candy store, which later turned into a grocery store.  There was Bobby{Isadore} Max, Sam, Harry,and Jack. My dad. who was the oldest, lived above the store with his four brothers and two sisters, Faye and Dottie.  Will have to post a picture of all of my cousins standing in front of Geller Bros.  My uncle Jack and Aunt Millie had the Sugar Bowl, and my Aunt Faye and Uncle Jaime had the chicken market. My dad Bobby died several years ago, and I have fond memories of going to the markets, and visiting grandma Sophie .  If you have anything to share, I would love it!  This all brings tears to my eyes.  Melody                 Please e mail me @  melody.dancer@cox.net thank you
City Girla short video shot on Bathgate in 1958 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgxr03mcVAs
Moe, Irv and Max from BathgateMoe, Irv and Max from 1648 Bathgate Ave. in the 1940s are all doing well! I am Max's eldest daughter Aylene. My Dad wrote an article I attached below which was published in a magazine. I spotted this site and couldn't help but to send it to you. Should you wish to reach out to my Dad Max, his e-mail address is primeno19@aol.com. I am sure he would love to reminisce about the days at Bathgate!
GOLDMAN’S YARN on BATHGATE AVE.
Your last issue on Goldman’s Yarn store prompted me to reflect on some very fond childhood memories. When I was asked for my address as a young boy, at about the age of 11-12, I usually responded, “1648 Bathgate Ave., across the street from Goldman’s”. Mentioning Goldman’s as part of my address not only pinpointed my house but in my mind it elevated the status of my building. To the people in our area, Goldman’s was a neighborhood landmark. It almost ranked with the Loew’s Paradise Theater. 
My recollection of the Bathgate Ave. area in the late 1940’s was that shoppers associated the ‘market’ as the place to get bargains. My friend claimed he purchased a pair of pants and received a price reduction when he traded in his old pants. The pedestrian traffic on Bathgate Ave from 171st to 174th caused it to be among the most populated areas in the Bronx. Stores were continuous on both sides of the street. There were bakeries, grocery stores, shoe stores, clothing stores, butchers, novelty stores, candy stores, the very first Daitch store, and Olinsky which specialized in appetizing foods. Also, there were many, many vegetable stores which had stands extending half way out onto the sidewalk. Every woman had her favorite stores where she shopped. Also, stationary pushcarts were on the street lined up back to back selling vegetables which added to this already congested scene. In between the pushcarts one can see many horses (how else did the pushcart get to the location?) on the street and some parked cars. The cars which dared to travel through Bathgate Ave. were crawling at 5 mph. This was the environment where Goldman’s was situated. Goldman’s Yarn and Barash Decorators were considered the upscale stores in the area. These stores attracted patrons from affluent Bronx areas, such as the West Bronx (Concourse area), Riverdale, and Parkchester. 
During the early evening hours (after dinner), Bathgate Ave. took on a different appearance. Pedestrian traffic subsided, pushcarts were leaving, stores were closing, sanitation crews came in for their nightly clean-up job, and many of the residents in the buildings came outside to recapture their street. Mothers relaxed on their chairs outside and discussed the day’s activities with a little gossip injected to spice up their conversation. Friends from various age groups would congregate for their evening activity. One vegetable stand was used for a nightly card game by the older kids. One evening, that card game ended abruptly when a woman in the building above the stand poured a pail of water on the card players for making too much noise. Needless to say, they never played cards at that stand again. 
For a few years, one of the street games I enjoyed was ‘off the point’. This was a variation of ‘stoop ball’. In this game, we threw a spaldeen at the metal bar just below a store’s window. We used Goldman’s Yarn store for our game because it had a sharp point on its metal bar. On an accurate throw at the metal bar, a ball could travel far and hit the building across the street. If not caught, it‘s considered a home run. Occasionally when we were not so accurate with our throw, we would hit the store’s window above the bar causing the window to vibrate. Of course we kids could never think of the possibility of breaking a window. Evidently Mr. Goldman had a more realistic viewpoint. One evening, as my friends (Pete Palladino, Joseph Greco, and Angelo Pezullo) and I were playing this game, Mr. Goldman ran out angrily chasing us away from his store. The following evening, we needed a substitute activity. We decided to make picket signs which read, “Goldmans is Unfair to Kids”, and jokingly marched in front of the store with these signs. Apparently Mr. Goldman did not see this action as amusing. On the following night, as we were picketing again, 2 policemen from a patrol car stopped and approached us. They took our signs and told us to leave the area. Obviously Mr. Goldman called the police. This was a dramatic event for 11 and 12 year old kids. Who would believe we had a confrontation with the police at that age? During the next few years, I noticed many stores on Bathgate Ave were installing accordion gates. At that time, I naively thought the store owners installed the gates to curtail our evening game ‘hit the point’.
Max Tuchman
1657 Bathgate in the 1920s (and maybe 30s)A great-great grandfather of mine (Solomon Beckelman) lived at 1657 Bathgate with his wife (Minnie) and at least one of their daughters (Pauline) in the 1920s. His son, Abraham, was my great-grandfather. Solomon was a tailor, and Abe was a cutter and dressmaker who was married with children by 1912. From the maps I've seen, 1657 and the whole block of houses is (long?) gone. 
2068 Bathgate AveMy great-grandaunt, Anna Havemann, lived at 2068 Bathgate Ave from at least 1936 (the year of this photo) until maybe 1950.
The building that stands there is a large apartment building. Near as I can tell, it's the same building.
(The Gallery, Arthur Rothstein, NYC, Stores & Markets)

Paging Edward Hopper: 1940
Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Massachusetts. December 1940. Photograph by Jack ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/07/2011 - 2:43pm -

Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Massachusetts. December 1940. Photograph by Jack Delano. View full size. These duplexes must have been fairly grand when they were new, probably around the turn of the century. They look like the house where Granny and Tweety Bird lived. Are they still there?
I'll get it running some dayEver since there have been cars somebody has put them on blocks and abandoned them.
Are you sure that picture isn't a model?Look at the people.  They just don't look real.  And neither does the car or the big tree limb in front of it all.
They are still there...I can't promise you that these exact ones are still around, but there are many that look just like this in Brockton.  Some have been restored, some are still run down.
Sure it isn't a model?The people don't look real.  The car looks like a toy, and the tree limb in front of it all is huge.
Tree limb??That's a telephone pole. Click here. Another version is here.
Telephone pole?Actually it is a power pole, there are no telephone lines on it. If you look real close you can see the telephone pole and lines in the back.
ever wonder?Ever wonder what the people's thoughts were at the moment the photo was taken? A. Moore
Re: Sure it isn't a model?I haven't poked around this site a lot, so maybe this info is here somewhere (yeah, yeah, I read the explanation of the Shorpy name) -- but maybe you should explain more background to a lot of these photos from the 30s and 40s. 
Of course they're real. 
These are by documented, well-known, and legendary photographers. Walker Evans. Lewis Hine. Dorothea Lange. Ben Shahn. Russell Lee. Look them up. 
The photos are so detailed because they used large format cameras with honking big negatives.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/fsa/welcome.html
Read the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Get a hardcover copy that really shows off Walker Evan's photos.
And keep looking back here for more leads on great documentary photography. 
Looks real to me.I'm loving those roofs. The shape is wonderful.
How pretty these homes must have looked when new. 
This, and "American Gothic".I don't know if it's of any use, but if you look at the "American Gothic" image (another from this shoot), the number 22 is chalked onto the left door on the porch.  Maybe somebody who knows Brockton (Dianne Cantara, where are you?) can track down this locale and tell us what's there now. 
FantasticThese houses are fantastic.
Are they duplexes or quads? That's an amazing amount of house for a duplex! 
Mansard RoofThere are many examples of this style of house where I live, I grew up in one very similar that had 4 single family homes in it, each of which is now at least 5 apartments.  The roof style is a Mansard roof if I'm not mistaken and is fairly common in the Northeastern US and Canada, it stands up well to a heavy snowload.
Mansard RoofThe mansard roofs and style of these houses is called the French Second Empire style. In the last half of the 19th century, it was common to have roofs with dormers. It provided an extra residential floor, but tax assessments did not count the top floor in the market appraisals, so owners were, in effect, adding a floor to the building without being taxed for it. This was explained to me by a historian who recently gave a wonderful two-hour walking tour of houses and mills along the Quinebaug River in Putnam, Connecticut. You can see some interesting information about this at:
http://www.americanlandmarks.com/french.htm
They are there!I grew up in Brockton and those places are still there!
Brockton, Mass.Would anyone please post the address of the location this shot was taken?  I am working on a photogray project where I am shooting with a similar vision as Edward Hopper paintings.  These Mansard Roof homes would be perfect subject matter at sunrise/sunset.
Oh, please forward the address to my e-mail at sternedwards@aol.com
Thanks In Advance,
Charles Roland
1932 Ford Standard TudorThe car is a 1932 Ford Standard Tudor and the color is Washington Blue. I have one just like it.
Look at the detailsI see details such as the fading wreaths in the windows, the rain downspouts that have a "Y" connectors from the second floor roof to the bay window roofs, then to the next level  and then down to the ground; the corbels in the entry way.  So many homes had them as trim items and so many are removed today.  A lot of architectural character is missing in today's homes.
Is it totally genuine?The power pole looks fake at the base, and its shadow is narrower than the pole itself. And take a look at the shadow of the child in black: different angle. The dog ... oh well ... no shadow at all. Maybe not totally fake, but surely retouched.
[The shadow of the pole would be the same width as its base if you could see where two the came together behind the where the dirt has built up along the pavement. The shadow on the ground next to the kid is cast by whatever he's holding; his own shadow is much smaller, like the dog's. - Dave]
(The Gallery, Brockton, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Dogs, Jack Delano, Kids)

143 Hudson Street: 1911
... years old; Camille, 7 years old. Picking nuts in a dirty tenement home. The bag of cracked nuts (on chair) had been standing open all ... a story, but I haven't posted it on my website yet. This tenement burned down a few years later, and the family lost everything, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/09/2011 - 6:17pm -

New York, December 1911. "143 Hudson Street, ground floor. Mrs. Salvia; Joe, 10 years old; Josephine, 14 years old; Camille, 7 years old. Picking nuts in a dirty tenement home. The bag of cracked nuts (on chair) had been standing open all day waiting for the children to get home from school. The mangy cat (under table) roamed about over everything. Baby is sleeping in the dark inner bedroom (three yrs. old)." Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.
re: Paper ThingsI think they're Victorian Christmas tree decorations which are usually filled with nuts or candy.  I would guess that the family is shelling walnuts to put into the paper containers (cone and slit-sided).  
143 Hudson Street:This is Joe Manning, of the Lewis Hine Project. I found the sons of Joe and Camille last year and interviewed both of them. This is quite a story, but I haven't posted it on my website yet. This tenement burned down a few years later, and the family lost everything, including their family pictures. When I sent the Hine photo to Joe's son, he was very excited, because it was the first photo he had seen of his father as a boy, his grandmother at a younger age, and the inside of the tenement where they lived. Joe became a New York City policeman and moved to California when he retired. Camille married and had a long and successful life. The story will be posted on my site some time this year. www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/lewishine.html
ExaggerationHines sure likes to breathe fire into every scene.  Place doesn't look dirty to me -- just messy, like any kitchen where work is being done.  Cat doesn't look mangy and cats always roam all over everything.  All seem to have shoes (a good sign in those days).  So, the nut bag was open all day -- so what.  They have protective shells.  Hines certainly did an admirable job of depicting poverty but I don't think this is one of those times based solely on the photo.  They all look pretty happy to me.
[Hine's motive, as we have pointed out many times, was the elimination of child labor. So his captions, which accompanied these photos in the National Child Labor Committee's report to Congress, tended to paint as bleak a picture as possible. As for the cat, his point was that fur, fleas etc. could have gotten into the nuts, which were already cracked and would go back to the wholesaler to be sold to the public after the kids had removed the shells. Communicable disease and adulteration or contamination of foodstuffs and fabric were among the health issues attached to tenement homework. - Dave]
The CatSorry, but I must once again take exception to Mr. Hine's description, even though I know his intentions. The family looks happy, and I would hardly describe the apartment as "dirty." My 3 cats "roam about over everything," as all cats are wont to do, and this one is no more mangy than I am. Cats really have a bad rap, considering they are one of the cleanest creatures on earth AND they keep vermin populations down.
[His point was that cat hair, fleas etc. could have gotten into the nuts, which were already cracked and would be sold at market after they were hulled. - Dave]
Judgy?The caption seems a big judgmental to me...the place may be a bit messy but it's not as bad as the caption says is it? They all seem to be happy. The furniture looks pretty nice.
Josh
Radio?Anyone know what the "thing" is hanging on the wall next to the calendar?  Looks like a box of some sort.
[It's a gas meter. There was no radio in 1911. - Dave]

Nut PickersIt doesn't look that horrible, at least they're smiling. The way Hine describes this scene, he would have had a stroke seeing the people in the Elm Grove picture.
The WallsIn this photo and in a lot of other photos of tenements, there always seems to be a lot of pictures hanging on the walls. I've always wondered why this is.
Also in this photo the wallpaper is unusual. Can anyone make out what the pattern is?
Items on lineThere's a line/cord running from the doorway to the gas meter and it has items hanging from it.  Can anyone tell what they are?  The look like little paper lanterns to me.
Christmas ornaments perhaps?
[Are they papillotes? Those paper cutlet frills you'd put on the bones of a crown roast. Maybe another branch of this family's cottage industry. - Dave]

Paper thingsI don't know about the slit-sided ones (can't tell for sure if they have a bottom or liner in them) but to this day you can buy nuts at Christmas in those cone-shaped bags like that, so maybe they are all nut-containers of some kind.
Shell GameFrom their smiles, it does appear they are trying to make a game of this tedious task.  That looks like a sewing machine at far right.  If so, it would seem Mrs. Salvia could earn more by stitching piece goods for the garment industry than shelling nuts.  But maybe not. I don't think any of the home workers earned much, whatever the task.
[According to Lewis Hine's notes, "nut-picking" brought in about $4 a week. - Dave]
Nuts to DollarsOut of curiosity, I went to a dollar buying power historic conversion site. According to their calcs, one dollar in 1911 would equate to $23.64 in today's economy. So, their nut enterprise would garner the equivalent of something like $88 per week now. 
The thing on the wallIn the tenements, each apartment had a gas meter installed on the interior wall. If you wanted gas, you put money in the slot like a vending machine, and you could run your stove, lamps, what have you till the money ran out.
TB WindowThose windows commonly seen in old tenement photos like these were called "Tuberculosis Windows".  The idea behind them was to facilitate air circulation in those stuffy tenements, thus helping to alleviate the TB that was rampant at the time. 
143 Hudson StreetThis is Joe Manning, of the Lewis Hine Project. The link to my story of this family has been changed. It is now:
http://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2014/11/26/camille-and-joseph-salvia-pa...
(The Gallery, Kids, Kitchens etc., Lewis Hine, NYC)

Ambridge Alley: 1938
... streets would be laid out to modern standards. [The tenement district of Ambridge was razed in the early 1950s as part of a slum ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 01/14/2008 - 5:16pm -

July 1938. Another view of "housing conditions in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, home of the American Bridge Company." View full size. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. While I guess the point here is the decrepit nature of the neighborhood, it looks to have been a great place to grow up. Like something from a Neil Simon play.
Twins?I wonder if the girls on the right are twins--they look to be.
Everyone looks clean and tidy, very little trash about. I agree--a nice neighborhood.
Ambridge AlleyAre we looking at the backs of these apartments?
[The front. - Dave]
AmbridgeThe appeal of this place is the closeness. The neighbors all know each other and rub elbows every day. My childhood neighborhood wasn't quite as crowded as this but we all knew each other well, while we don't today. I miss it.
PhiladelphiaWith the exception of the front steps, my house had 4 steps, this looks just like the street I grew up on. the actual street was wide enough for cars to park on one side of the street, the second floor had two bedrooms and a bath, the first floor had a living room, dining room and a kitchen, the basement ran the length of the house, it was a great place to grow up.
AmbridgeI grew up in the Pittsburgh area. It never dawned on me that the town of Ambridge took its name from the American Bridge Company that was located there.  Great old photo.  
AmbridgeMy dad grew up in Ambridge; my grandparents lived there until they died a few years ago. I've spent lots of time tehre.
But I can't for the life of me figure out where in Ambridge this photo was taken. Most of the town looks nothing like this, but is single-family homes of various sizes (nearly all modest), including the early 18th Century Harmonist community.  Next time I'm back there I'll roam around and look for this alley for sure.  I wouldn't be surprised if it were still there--urban renewal pretty much left Ambridge unscathed.
Ambridge Shipyard
The American Bridge Company (a division of United States Steel) built a number of LST ships for the US Navy during WW II, including the LST- 847.  The above photo shows the constructor's plaque that was mounted on the wall of the officer's dining area in the LST-847.

The LST-847 slides down the launching ways and into the Ohio River at the American Bridge Co., Ambridge, PA on Dec. 17, 1944.
(National Archives Photo)
Mike_G
MGM musicalsThis reminds me of scenes from many of those old musicals, where someone is walking down the street and begins to sing, and all the people looking out the windows chime in with harmony and choruses...and everyone dances in step.
Back alley, I thinkI also think this is a back alley and you are seeing back doors on these row houses.
Reason 1: No mailboxes.
Reason 2: Who hangs their laundry out in FRONT of their home?
Reason 3: This is late enough for motor vehicles, yet only a horse, bicycle, or person could walk down that street.
Seems evidence that the street is on the other sides of the buildings and this is just meant as an walkway.
[This is the front. The back is here. And how's that Edsel? - Dave]
The StreetWhile 1938 is late enough for cars, there's no indication of when the buildings were built. Dare I say it, since this was obviously a working class area and probably developed at the same time as American Bridge set up operations - probably as company housing - there may have been a feeling when it was being built that there was no need for wider streets; that the people living in the area wouldn't have carriages or horses (let alone those new-fangled horseless carriages) so why waste the space when you could build more row housing. I would imagine that if this are were ever redeveloped the old buildings would be torn down and new streets would be laid out to modern standards.
[The tenement district of Ambridge was razed in the early 1950s as part of a slum clearance project. - Dave]
Front or Back?The back is here.
Ambridge AlleyMy mother grew up in this neighborhood she affectionately calls First Street, on Marshall Alley ... She said it was the best place ever growing up, even though everyone was pretty poor. They have a First Street Reunion every year to this day and have a dinner gathering. She always talks about her friends during that time and how everyone looked out for everyone else.
Good "old" AmbridgeI've spent a lot of time in my adult life mucking about in Ambridge, and the poor old place is just another dying Rust Belt town now, and just breaks your heart to walk about and see the vacant buildings that line the streets.
It's nice to see Ambridge folks in happier times.
1949 to 56I was 2 when my family moved to 201 Marshall Alley. My Grandparents and my uncle and his family lived in "The Alley" for 7 years. Yes, everyone hung their laundry from the second story window, both in front and back. We had to carry the washed laundry from the cellar to the second floor bedroom. Marshall Alley was condemned in the mid fifties but many of us stayed to the last before finding other places to live. We did not qualify for the "new" Economy Village that had been built for lower income families. My family scraped together enough money to put a down payment on a house up on Glenwwod Drive. Lots of great memories from The Alley.
Front to backThe homes on the right is the back and on the left is the front side.  There were three rows of homes like these, the front ones facing First Street and all three stretching form Maplewood to Merchant street. The other side of First street was lined with businesses on the first floor, and homes upstairs.
More comments herehttps://www.shorpy.com/node/15453
(The Gallery, Ambridge, Arthur Rothstein)

U.S.S. Franklin: 1916
... looks like the Admiral got lost in a fog and rammed a tenement. Ancient Mariner That is some crazy houseboat! The old bit ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/22/2012 - 9:31pm -

1916. "U.S.S. Franklin, used as training ship. Admiral Farragut's flagship." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.
Tattered sailsAye me mateys, the years have not been kind to the old frigate. 
Two By TwoIt looks like Noah's Ark collided with a beach house.
The FranklinAccording to Donald Canney in "The Old Steam Navy" Vol. 1, the Franklin was begun in 1853 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, and completed at a leisurely pace, being launched in 1864. The last traditional frigate with broadside guns on two decks, she could steam at 10¼ knots, but of course had a full ship rig in her prime. She was active from 1867 to 1877, when she became a receiving ship at Norfolk. She was sold in October 1915, so they could have been preparing to scrap the venerable ship in this photo, in Norfolk or elsewhere.
The Floating Apartment HouseThis picture is what my imagination would come up with if I were to wonder what an apartment house would look like at sea.  I'm sure there is a logical explanation, but I like the Dali sensibility of it.
Ahoy, super...That thing looks like the Admiral got lost in a fog and rammed a tenement. 
Ancient MarinerThat is some crazy houseboat! The old bit underneath, with the elaborate carving under the "porch," is amazing.
First words to my mind?What a monstrosity! 
I've heard of houseboats...But apartmentboats and officeblockboats are a new one to me.
Down to the Sea in BungalowsWow. The ultimate Sausalito summer place. Perhaps the only thing to add here is an image of the USS Franklin as she appeared when still in active service.

U.S.S. ConstitutionIt was quite common to use aging wooden ships as receiving ships. They'd build a barracks structure on top of the original hull and new recruits or men returning from a voyage whose ships were undergoing refit would be housed aboard. It was cheaper than buying land and building barracks. A similar thing was done with the USS Constitution and lasted until 1905.

Stuff HappensIsn't that "porch" actually a poop deck?
Full Speed In All Directions!Or, none. This ship appears to be a refugee from some H.P. Lovecraft imaginary universe, where everything is just a little off-kilter. Just enough to be nightmarishly disturbing...
Next stop CozumelNo much worst aesthetically than the overgrown, topheavy cruise ships that prowl the seas these days.
So it's a training ship, huh?I can't even imagine what anyone assigned to this floating rowhouse would be training for, unless the Navy was trying to get involved in selling siding door-to-door.
Flying DutchmanThis isn't the USS Franklin.  It's the Flying Dutchman from the Bermuda Triangle!
Hidden majestyI'm sure any admiral would be impressed when told that this . . ship . . was to carry his flag.
A Ship ShopThe Franklin was a receiving ship at the Naval Training Station near Norfolk, Virginia, and also housed some shops that served the whole station. My grandfather's duty station was on the Franklin after he returned from a trip around the world on the USS Louisiana with the Great White Fleet in 1909 -- must have been quite a letdown.  
We have a newspaper clipping about my grandfather's shop on the USS Franklin from sometime between 1909 and 1915:
Since the station first started there has been a busily humming shop where navy trousers and torn jumpers are mended and made whole again.  A very small charge is made for the tailoring of uniforms and chief Doyle's ready good humor is known all over the station.  The clever fingers of his crew of skilled workmen have saved many a sailor from expending his pay for a new outfit when it could be made whole again by a bit of mending.
Topheavy to say the least...How much ballast must be in the hold to keep her from rolling over?  I wish my Grandfather were alive to comment!
Like an icebergThere is more below the waterline than you think.
Just a little more canvasThe old gal must've been a real leaker by then also. I'll surmise that canvas underneath her hull must run from stern to stem!
(The Gallery, Boats & Bridges, Harris + Ewing)

Crackerbox: 1940
... January 1940. "Family living in a 'crackerbox' slum tenement in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania." Medium-format nitrate negative by Jack ... their dignity. And what the heck is a "crackerbox slum tenement" anyway? I lived not far from Beaver Falls, at the little river town ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 05/11/2009 - 11:00pm -

January 1940. "Family living in a 'crackerbox' slum tenement in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania." Medium-format nitrate negative by Jack Delano. View full size.
Geeze...I'm now thoroughly depressed. Can we please get back to those nice scantily clad swimsuit models now? 
Why be depressed?Hey - at least this was the exception, in the US.
"By 1965, 38% of houses in Glasgow had no fixed toilet or shower.
"By 1985, 5% of households still did not have a bath or shower." - Glasgow People's Palace (museum)
TightAnd I thought those camping trailers were small.
ReflectionsThe people reflected in the mirror don't seem like they are very close to being down and out, although looks can be deceiving. At least they seem to have retained their dignity.
And what the heck is a "crackerbox slum tenement" anyway?
I lived not far from Beaver Falls, at the little river town of Beaver on the north bank of the Ohio, back in the summer of 1956. It was one of the nicest little towns I've ever lived in, although you had to go across the Beaver River on the bridge to Rochester to buy a beer or see a movie.
Pillow TalkI remember those embroidered pillowcases. I bet Dad usually woke up with the word "Dad" imprinted on his forehead.
A poignant pictureDespite the family's desperate situation there are clues of a happy life framed in this shot. They are safe and warm from the snow storm seen through the window. Their child's dolls are nearby. On the dresser is a treasured portrait of a smiling young couple who are obviously in love.  Despite the conditions they find themselves, the mirror reveals them smiling as they look over toward their child in the crib.  This is a loving family that will survive their circumstances.
[Revised clue: The kid's on the bed, not in the crib. - Dave]
Door to where?I'm curious about the door behind the bed.  It's latched and nailed shut.  
The BabyI didn't realize that was a baby until I looked at the photo full sized. The guardian angel on the crib made me choke up.
The DoorThis might have been a room for rent.
Luz artificial.Por la traza de las sombras se aprecia que la luz procede de un punto interior de la habitación. Probablemente de un foco eléctrico o un flash, quizás de magnesio. La luz natural disponible en el interior, seguramente, habría reflejado una imagen más sombría y aún más deprimente.
The DresserThe finial over the mirror is missing. I bought a similar dresser at a yard sale years ago. The top part kept falling off.
The lamp on the dresserThese people owned a very nice "collectible of the future" -- an early 20th century Heintz Art Metal lamp, made by Otto Heintz of Buffalo, of dark bronze with sterling onlays. These are very sought after by collectors of Craftsman style furnishings, and nowadays usually sell for several hundred dollars, unless some eager beaver has polished the bronze. Below is a similar lamp.

Famous BeaveriteJoe Willie Namath was born there in 1943!
Jim and Della - revisitedSomething of this photo reminds me of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi". Here we have Jim and Della, some years later, though bereft of their treasures, still the hopeful parents of innocent babes, and still rich in the love they share for each other...
"And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."
Ansel Adams had the Zone System... I'm working on the points system. First I points it here, and then I points it there...
Wake up!That is one limp-looking baby. At first I thought it was a big doll.
NeighborsThe door likely led to another apartment.  A lot of houses were subdivided later into apartments and rather than removing the old doorway, the landlord simply nailed it shut.  I used to live in single family home converted into a duplex and a good many once-useful doors to the other half of the house were latched/nailed/boarded shut.
My Aching BackYou know that sleeping on that mattress had to be utter torture. 
Home Sweet HomeHome is where the Heart is.
Buckle alignmentIt appears that the man, reflected in the mirror, has his belt buckle aligned on his side rather than in front above the zipper. What gives.
[It means he was a former hipster. - Dave]
Belt BuckleMy Gramps wore his that way until he died a few years back. My grandmother says it was cool in the 30's. He couldn't let that fad go; maybe he was waiting for it to come back in style. 
Belt buckle bass playersI am a professional classical musician and have noticed that string bass players shift their belt buckles to the side, in order to avoid scratching the finish on the wood in proximity to their bodies. 
They may or may not be doing that to be "hip". But it works.
MomI guess she's the one taking the shot. I love her little handbag behind the dresser lamp. And the "Dad" pillowcase. 
Pennies from heavenThis photo is so sweet.  I love the little details like the scissors hanging from the dresser, the photo of the happy couple and the purse on the dresser.  The detail on the lamp is pretty wonderful too. The baby seems pretty blissful to me. Oh and the "Dad" embroidered on the pillowcase.  
(The Gallery, Jack Delano)

Online: 1900
Circa 1900-1910. "Yard of tenement, New York City." Hung out to dry somewhere in Manhattan. Detroit ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/13/2012 - 8:19pm -

Circa 1900-1910. "Yard of tenement, New York City." Hung out to dry somewhere in Manhattan. Detroit Publishing Company glass negative. View full size.
Out of LineWhen I see these back porch clothesline photos I can't help but think of Mrs. Frobisher's squeaky pulley that concludes one of "Uncle Claude's" funniest vaudeville routines ever. W.C. Fields worked it into "It's a Gift" and the whole movie is a nonstop riot, perhaps his best. Well worth the looking into if you have never seen it.
UnmentionablesI see a lot of men's underwear and kids' undershirts but nowhere can I find any ladies' undergarments -- corsets and such.  I wonder if they aired those out to dry or if they had to be much more modest about it.
Pulley ServiceI wonder who had the job of climbing those tall poles to place / replace / rethread the pulleys.
Clearly  this isn't the French Quarter.
Clothespins and CommunityNot only is this a community of laundry, it's a Community. I miss neighbors, and sitting on the stoop on a warm summer evening, kids playing in the street, all of it. 
Bad Housekeeping?I like the messy, rebellious line of washing about 3 lines in from the top. At first, I decided to attribute it to the wind, but since everyone else's is so neat and straight, I wonder. 
I do see what looks like "unmentionables" towards the top right, and despite the predominance of plain longjohns, I do see some ladies print dresses in the bottom left corner.
UnmentionablesMy understanding is that corsets and other personal items were hung inside other things such as sheets or pillow cases. However I doubt if corsets were washed very often -- if ever.
Re: Pulley ServiceI read someplace (don't remember where) that in the days of laundry lines here in NYC, there were young boys who would shinny up the poles and adjust, repair, and replace the lines.  I think twenty five cents was the going rate.
Risky businessI thought it was a pain hanging clothes on our back yard line that was five feet off the ground. At least I didn't have to worry about falling out of a fourth floor window while doing it. 
The aroma!Even today, when clothes are hung outside to dry, they smell so much fresher than being confined in a dryer for 30-40 minutes with a chemical laden dryer sheet!
Why only whites?Does anyone know why there are only whites drying?
Generic Urban nostalgia I suppose most any city boy, or girl, who's over 50, will feel a pang of nostalgia for the 'Gentrified Tenements' our grand-parents lived in. I didn't care about the hour drive past the stinking oil crackers, or the four flights of stairs my mom and dad huffed up with pounds of holiday bounty. I relished the smells and sounds of the aging but solidly constructed apartments. This was life!
Whose wash is that?  Almost all of these tenements had basement areas where you could hang up stuff during inclement weather. Or dry out unmentionables. My godfather chose to set up an 8x16' model rail-road, much to the delight of us kids. 
Re: only whitesWhites were the first items washed, the first items hung. The women were washing the other stuff while the whites dried. The last items to be washed were usually papa's work clothes.
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC)

Downhill Racer: 1968
... in a coal mine or putting together fake flowers in a tenement house. Thanks Lewis Hine! And what an awesome truck. I'd love to ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 06/24/2009 - 4:51pm -

Diamond Bar, California, July 1968. My niece Mary having a good time, apparently. Neighbor has a nice early-60s Ford pickup. I shot this on 35mm Kodachrome. View full size.
You kids get offa my lawn!Looks like broken glass on the top of the cinderblock wall behind the pickup truck. That'll keep them damn kids offa the lawn!
There's one in every neighborhood - a cranky old man. In my semi-rural East Texas childhood neighborhood Mr. T (name withheld to protect the innocent) and his yappy dachshund Socrates ruled the block with a yard rake and bark alarm. We kids devised a bicycle-tire innertube mortar to launch magnolia cones and sweetgum seedpods into his yard from our tree fort - forcing him out there to pick them up, grumbling all the while "I'm a-goin' ta GIT them kids!"
Ahhh, suburbia.
Over the wallAnd on the other side of that cinderblock wall, a car I wish I'd gotten a close-up of. '58 Chrysler is my guess. Already a classic only 10 years later.
I'm also reliably informed that the stuff on the wall isn't glass, but white rocks about the size of golf balls, like the kind used on roofs at this time, and in fact you can see on the house the wall belongs to.
Total Bliss!Those kiddos are having an absolute blast! What a difference from working in a coal mine or putting together fake flowers in a tenement house. Thanks Lewis Hine! 
And what an awesome truck. I'd love to tool around in it today. 
Downhill racerNope, not glass, but white quartz rocks left over from the roofing job on the yellow house. I think the neighbors that lived there had 2 or 3 boys, but the rocks on the wall were just decorative. Or maybe to keep their own kids from climbing on them and falling off.
Notice the Dichondra lawn. All the latest in suburban Southern Calif living in 1968.
--Mother of the skateboard girl.
P.S. I sewed her dress. Did lots of clothesmaking in those days in suburbia.
JoyI was going to say, the look on that sweet little girl's face is pure joy. Or pure terror. Either way, it looked fun and it put a smile on my face. Thanks again, I am enjoying your pictures.
~mrs.djs
California RollGreat perspective here. The girl's taller than the house and twice as big as the truck.
Diamond Bar!I grew up right next to here in be-yootiful Walnut... but not until the late 70's, I'm afraid. Still, it's nice to see the San Gabriel Valley on Shorpy for once!
FordThe Ford pickup is a 1964, 65 or 66.  They used different bed styling in '63 and everything changed (for the worse) in 1967.
I had a 1964 Ford 3/4 ton camper special.  I sold it around 1980 and I still regret that bonehead move.  I should have kept it.  They REALLY don't make 'em like that anymore.
Ford interiors aren't what they once were.The most amazing thing about that old '64 Ford was the interior.
It had a thin pad across the edge of the dash but otherwise the interior (except for the bench seat and vinyl floormat, obviously) was nearly all painted or chromed metal. The steering wheel had a glorious chrome horn ring.
I challenge you to find even one small bit of exposed steel on a modern automobile or truck, let alone nearly the whole interior.
MoparOr is that car a DeSoto -- nothing else had taillights like it (except the Belchfire 88!).
Steve Miller
Someplace near the crossroads of America
What I Noticed...The Blue Blue Sky! Not any more! Not in Diamond Bar anyway! Great stuff.
Alternative Skateboard TechniquesThat's how my friend & I rode the old steel-wheeled skateboards (not that sissy urethane!) that belonged to my much older brother and sister. Or laying down on our stomachs, which is how I put a hole in my favorite shirt (purple paisley short-sleeve button-down) when it got stuck under one wheel.
Unbridled JOYOne of the most wonderful images I have seen in a long, long time.  You managed to capture perfectly the moment of pure joy from a simple pleasure - that most of us remember from our youth.
Personally I love your mix of the old with the new.
Thank you for all the work you do with this site.
Joy from MA
Skateboard wheelsThose are clay wheels, an improvement (?) over steel wheels. State-of-the-art in the 60s. Then urethane came along...  
Wow!My favorite picture on this site. It captures the care free days of my youth in the 60's perfectly. Thanks for posting that.   
Like my ChildhoodWow, this is beautiful! It's amazing to see my hometown in such a nostalgic light, since most people who live here only know it as it is now. It's also kind of fun to see kids then doing the same activities as kids do now, here. (I witnessed 3 kids going down my street today in the very same fashion, albeit on more modern boards)
Butt boarding!I can hear her laughing!
Tonka truck!The hairstyles! The blue of that truck! Looks like my Tonka toy camper blue-green! I was 13 and in Louisiana in '68, but can TOTALLY connect with this moment that the kids are experiencing-- thanks for the post!
Young lady, put on your shoes!Looks like she was having a blast!  I wonder what happened when she dropped her heels down to stop though.  I took many a chunk out of my feet when I just caught them on the ground for a second.  I'm from the East Coast though, so it wasn't skateboards but pedal cars and stripped grocery carts.
Looks like just a hint of 1966-67 Dodge Charger poking out behind the pickup.
StoppingAs I recall it, "braking" wasn't done with your heels; you simply let the board roll to a stop, or you rolled off the footpath onto the grass of the nearest front lawn.
Great photo, with great colours. 
"Yahoo! You're all clear, kid!"I've been scouring this site for an archetypal example of an image that matches my fictional mental stereotype of Kodachrome, and this is right near the top - it's violently sunny and was shot in California and it has a huge truck and suburbia. The truck has white-walled tyres. The image even has a lady in a one-piece dress, although she's not blonde and isn't wearing plastic sunglasses.
But the date is a little advanced; when I think of the colours of 1968 I think of colours that film could not capture, that could only be generated within a human mind soaked in drugs and the spirit of rock and roll. And the colour of armoured personnel carriers and helicopters in Vietnam, and of "Disraeli Gears." And a lot of third-hand mental images of things that happened in other continents ten years before I was born.
It's also a good image on an unemotional level. The photographer was smart enough to put the camera down at child-level; he pressed the button at the right time, and the other kids in the background tell a little story. Right time, right place, right direction, right film, right weather conditions etc. And on an emotional level it's wonderful.
Mopar PowerI wonder if that's a Chrysler 300 down the street.
(ShorpyBlog, Member Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Kids, tterrapix)

Washday: 1900
New York circa 1900. "Yard of tenement at Park Avenue and 107th Street." 11 x 14 inch glass negative, Detroit ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/26/2012 - 4:57pm -

New York circa 1900. "Yard of tenement at Park Avenue and 107th Street." 11 x 14 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Recalls Sam LevinsonThe Great Sam Levinson wrote of such a scene that his mother's nightgowns hung down a full three stories when wet, and his sister's skirts which "Dripped technicolor onto other people's whites"
PrecipitationRain must have made for an interesting day at work the next morning.
The GoldbergsThe lady in the upper left window has to be Mrs. Goldberg. She is getting ready to stick her head out the window and give us some words of wisdom.
No. 9My grandfather was section chief for the DM&IR Railway in Duluth, Minnesota. The company-owned house was directly next to the tracks, as these tenements are. My grandmother was fortunate to have her clothesline on the other side of the house. But I  remember her hanging out to the schedule of the Number 9 coming out of the Range with a load of iron ore.
See the lady in the window? Maybe she sees King Kong!
Off line.Don't the people at the far end of the block do laundry?
Soggy soxIf putting your wash out on the line causes rain, there must be a hurricane headed for Manhattan.
The UnmentionablesWhat? No jockstraps or thongs?
Bombs Away!Imagine what marks some birds with digestive problems could leave on those washday whites. 
Real life in New York CityWow. Here's the world of my immigrant grandparents -- the intimate backyard world. I love the details of the shirtwaist-wearing women in the top story apartment, whose child is out on the fire escape.  And the folks around a table on the right hand side of the picture, one story down.  They've got a plant on the fire escape and some other stuff -- it's like a balcony!
Wonderful picture - thanks Dave!
Solar poweredWhat a beautiful example of a "carbon footprint" this photo is showing. Not an electric clothes dryer in sight. Brings back memories of the postwar 1940s era. For some reason washday was always on a Monday, today's washday is a push of a button any day or time of the week. 
Day of the weekMust be Monday!
OMG!What would today's NIMBYists have to say about this scene?
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for meIf a big enough gust hit, those building could go sailing off into the sunset.
Drip Drip DripI guess wash day was also No Playing in the Backyard Day!
I wonder why the train wasn't movingThere is no Metro North station (back then, "New York and Harlem" station) between 42nd Street and 125th Street, or at least there hasn't been for a long time. This photo was probably taken through the window of a train that had stopped on the tracks for some reason.
[This photo was made with a giant view camera (11 by 14 inch glass negative) on a tripod. It's not a snapshot from a train window. Detroit Publishing was a professional outfit. - Dave]
The HoneymoonersYou can almost hear Ralph yelling out the window at Norton
That carbon footprintOf course most of these clothes were washed in boiling water that had been heated on a coal stove. So that's a few tons of soot right there.
Make Mine ModernGracious me, it makes me grateful for the "carbon footprint" of my washer and dryer for it keeps other "carbon" life forms from not only seeing my unmentionables, bot those who might leave a little carbon signature of their own on them.
In my world wash day is whenIn my world wash day is when I can be sure of a good warm sunny day, or after the heaters go on, whenever i don't mind my lower floor of the house filled with wet hanging clothes.  I don't know what folks did when it rained on wash day.  I usually pay attention to the weather.  If I do get rained out, fortunately there's still laundromats around with electric dryers.  I do have a state-of-the-art front loader machine for the washing (anyone want my old maytag wringer?)
I refuse to get a dryer just as I refuse to add a dish washer, or get an air conditioner.  One simply has to draw a line.
Hung out to dryMore interesting was watching the man who visited your backyard two or three times a year climb the poles to attach the clotheslines. "I climb poles" would echo through  the yards. He charged around 25 cents for the climb and would sell lines and pulleys. If one planned ahead, the line and pulley would have been bought in the local hardware store for a small savings.
PS The roof was used for sunbathing (Tar Beach)
Marmoset or Flower Pot?Great photograph!  Is that some sort of an animal on the window sill next to the top, far left? 
Btw, I see some unmentionables on the lines, but of course I can't, er, mention 'em.
From roots like thisCouple years later, couple blocks south, couple blocks other side of those train tracks -- one of the kids playing under those clotheslines will be named Henry Louis Gehrig.
From Monday OnFrom Monday on, my cares are over
From Monday on, I'll be in clover
We picked on Monday because it's washday
And we'll wash our blues away
From Monday on, the skies will look bright
Don't tell me different, I know I'm right
I'm gonna start shouting Hey Hey
When he says Love Honor and Obey
I'll be happy, from Monday on.
A catchy late '20s Paul Whiteman tune with Bing and the boys singing about wedded bliss.
(The Gallery, DPC, NYC)

Campbell Kids Kids: 1912
... 1912. "Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room, 59 Thompson Street, New York, 4th floor front. Romana family. ... seems unfortunate that he frequently used the term "dirty tenement room." It was a cold water, walk-up flat; they did the best they ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/09/2011 - 11:47am -

March 1912. "Making dresses for Campbell Kid Dolls in a dirty tenement room, 59 Thompson Street, New York, 4th floor front. Romana family. The older boy, about 12 years old, operates the machine when the mother is not using it, and when she operates, he helps the little ones, 5 and 7 years old, break the thread." View full size. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.
Campbell KidsI understand Lewis Hine's mission was to persuade Congress about the evils of child labor, but from today's perspective it seems unfortunate that he frequently used the term "dirty tenement room."  It was a cold water, walk-up flat; they did the best they could. This one doesn't look dirty to me.  The children are clean in clean clothes.  And the two boys in stripes must be twins.
Re: Campbell KidsOops!  The boys I thought were "twins" are five and seven years old.  Scratch that thought.
SewingIt looks like they are making doll onesies. The boy on the right has a string of backs and fronts with yokes. Mama is stitching the backs and fronts together at the shoulder seams. The boy on the left is turning collar sections right side out.
Interesting that mama does not have a spool of thread on her sewing machine. She may be using an industrial size spool feeding from the floor but unless she has a heavy stand the spool is likely to bounce around and snarl.  
Gypsies?Could he possibly mean that this is a "Romani" family?  That is the proper term for gypsies.  I come from a bit of Romanes background, and these children look to have a bit of the Rom in them.  It would be unusual for most Rom to stay in a tenement - at least in the long term.
What are Campbell kids? LikeWhat are Campbell kids? Like the Campbell soup kids/dolls?
Doll clothes manufactureMy grandparents, both Italian teenaged immigrants, met and fell in love in a doll clothes factory in 1917. This family, also Italian, are doing the same thing. I always imagined the clothes they were sewing to be a bit more fancy; but who knows? Thanks for digging this one up. (Where do you find these photos?!?)
SingerWhat I wouldn't give for that sewing machine.
My mom has a brown metal Singer that belonged to her grandmother, and it's outlasted every plastic sewing machine we've ever had.
I see that Lewis Hine's isI see that Lewis Hine's is at it again with his pejorative captions. I like seeing his photos of New York's Lower East Side, but Hine has got a bit of a loose screw about things being "dirty."
https://www.shorpy.com/node/2213
treadle SingerTreadle sewing machines can be had for around $100.  The thread coming up from the floor looks very thick, which is odd for sewing doll clothes.  Regular sewing thread would barely be visible.  She's probably using an industrial cone rather than a spool but, like Tracy said, it would have to be in some sort of holder to prevent it from rolling around.  Wish I could see behind the little boy's chair!
Hine's agendaWere his subjects aware of Hine's mission?  It makes me sad to think they dressed in their Sunday best and invited him into their homes to be photographed, only to have him describe them in some pretty unflattering terms.  Or did he believe that the ends justified the means?
campbell's kidsyep, they were soup commercial dolls.
Campbell Kid DollsIn most of the advertisements by Campbell Soup until the late 1940's, "The Kids" along with a four line poem promoting a favorite soup, appeared faithfully in the advertising media. Dolls of Campbell Kids were offered in 1910 as promotional items and were a hit. Through the years, the dolls have become popular collectors' items. [Link]
Dirty?Of course, Hine was there and we were not...
Campbell Kid DollFor those wondering what the dolls look like, a detail below from here.

(The Gallery, Kids, Lewis Hine, NYC)
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