American History Digitized

"Street scene at 38th Street and 7th Avenue, New York City" Russell Lee (1936)

For a period of ten years (1935-1945), the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) hired photographers to document American life, particularly in areas hit the hardest by the Depression, and to show the effects of the government’s relief programs. The result was some of the most iconic images of the 20th-century, many taken by photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks. 

Stored at the Library of Congress, 170,000 of these images have recently been digitized by a group at Yale University and uploaded to Photogrammar, an archive site that allows for easy searching and viewing. It also includes an interactive map that shows the location of roughly 90,000 images.

These are just a sampling of some of the images I found when I looked up New York City.

"Children playing in the gutter on 139th Street just east of St. Anne's Avenue, Bronx, New York" Russell Lee (1936)

"Strike pickets, New York, New York" Arthur Rothstein (1937)

"42nd Street and Madison Avenue, Street hawker selling Consumer's Bureau Guide, New York City" 

Dorothea Lange (1939)

"Grand Central Terminal, New York City" John Collier (1941)

"New York, New York. Dancing and music on Mott Street, at a flag raising ceremony in honor of neighborhood boys in the United States Army" Marjory Collins (1942)

"New York, New York. Drinking fountain in Central Park" Marjory Collins (1942)

 I could spend hours looking through these. To check out Photogrammar, visit here.

May Day

Dorothy Zimmerman, as Spring, crowning Irma Sweeney as the May Queen at the May Day festival

 at the Neighborhood House, Washington, DC, 1925. Photo: Library of Congress.

It's May Day, the day on which you are suppose to either cavort or revolt (or maybe a bit of both). If you're not in the mood to do either, I suggest taking a walk and checking your local blooms. Even after the torrential rains of yesterday, the cherry blossoms in my neighbourhood were still looking glorious this morning. 

After a dismal April, I've got my fingers crossed that May turns out to be a better month so here's to sunnier dispositions all around. 

Votes for Women

Ninety years ago today American women won the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. 

Suffragettes riding a float at the New York Fair, Yonkers (1913).

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." 

Inez Boissevain at a suffrage parade in Washington, DC (1913).

So let's take a moment to remember Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all the countless other suffragettes who fought, and sometimes gave their lives, so we could have this fundamental right.

To see more images from the suffrage movement, visit the Library of Congress' collection "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920.