These photos, taken by Eugène Atget, document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. Atget took up photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters, architects, and stage designers.…
These images, taken between the turn of the 20th century and the 1950s, show how student housing in the US has changed over the past hundred or so years. The students used a vivid combination of vintage decor, collegiate pennants, high school diplomas, fami…
Advertising has always been an interesting way to trace how modern society has evolved. At the core, the marketing campaigns are based on what people want and what appeals to them. When you judge human history based on old advertisements, the past will …
Victorian mourning jewelry was popular during the late 1800s and was used as a tribute or memento to remind the wearer about their love for the person they had lost. Death was a regular occurrence in Victorian times, thanks to pervasive diseases like ch…
These photographs taken in early and mid-20th century Germany show anonymous people posing alongside actors dressed as polar bears. The pictures, part of a TeddyBär collection, were compiled between the end of the First World War and the late 1960s by Jean-…
These vivid photos from inside the 1972 Texas State Fair exhibition hall show people sampling a wide variety of the products of their state, from eggs and beef to pecans and spring water. The Dallas State Fair & Exposition, to which the present State Fa…
In these vintage photos, the LIFE magazine photographer Sam Shere captured the “indecent exposure” phenomenon at Rockaway Beach, New York in 1946. Starting with a sign that reads “wear robes to and from the beach,” Shere’s series shows women sunbathing …
During World War II, letters were essential for soldiers and sailors stationed overseas. The average soldier wrote six letters a week. Those letters took anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks to cross the ocean to the United States. Each letter received at home assure…
There are several accounts from the 1850s describing the unexplained appearance in photographs of translucent figures representing the departed. According to Owen Davies in The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, ghost photography started with photographic…
These photos from the Gulbenkian Art Library capture the men and women of Lisbon and the nearby towns of Ericeira and Nazaré as they haul in their boats, mend their nets and sell their catch. A visual testimony of a vanished way of life on the Iberian coast. …
The Great Migrations from 1910 to 1960 brought hundreds of thousands of African-Americans from the South to Chicago, where they became an urban population. They created churches, community organizations, businesses, music, and literature. African Americans …
The Victorian Era may not have been the start of the institutionalization of patients with mental health problems, but it was certainly a period when the number of asylums and patients treated within them, exploded. Whether this rise was mainly due to a…
These vintage photographs show the airship Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 flying over Chicago in August 1929, on the American leg of its round-the-world trip. The crew flew the airship low over the city and the crowds were mesmerized by the sight. This is how the…
USS Brooklyn, the third United States Navy armored cruiser, was completed in 1896 in Cramp, New York, and named after a famous quarter of the City. Recognizable by her three very tall funnels, she embodied grace and might, being the tallest, fastest cruiser…
In 1942 and 1943, the Farm Security Administration photographer Jack Delano spent time in the rail yards of Chicago, documenting the busy freight hub and the workers’ everyday life. The photographs were made on Kodachrome color transparencies creating vibr…
These vintage ads for cocaine and cocaine paraphernalia show how crazy and disturbing the 1970s were. It was a time when it was normal to see advertisements offering all kinds of coke equipment such as a spray to ease irritated nostrils, products to kee…
Dubbed by the media as the “world’s largest log cabin,” (actually, second largest), the Forestry Building was constructed as part of Portland’s Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905. The cabin was an enormous structure, measuring 206 feet long (…
During the era of silent film, recommendations for behavior were displayed on title cards before a screening, offering advice including "Ladies, kindly remove your hats", "Loud talking or whistling not allowed", "Please applaud with hands only", etc. The Li…
These vintage photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States show teams of horses being used to move entire houses to new locations. With the rapid railway and urban development boom, a lot of people found themselves looking to …
These vintage photos, taken by Sten-Åke Stenberg, depict the street scenes and everyday life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The Soviet 1970s was long. Coinciding with the rule of Leonid Brezhnev from 1964 to 1982 in both scholarly and popular u…