A store bearing the sign “Auctions and Negro Sales,” Atlanta, GA, 1864. Photo by George N. Barnard. Public domain.
Category Archives: History
New York Public Market, 1948
Found via /r/historyporn, original found at Shorpy.
March 22, 1948. The New York City Public Market at First Avenue and East 73rd Street (?), an example of the food market in transition. A typical 19th-century market would have many separate vendors in an open-air space like a town square. By the early 1900s the open-air space had given way to separate vendors under a large shed roof with no walls, often near the train station. Here in 1948 the space is enclosed, but still with separate vendors (greengrocer, butcher, dry goods, fishmonger etc.). After the introduction of centralized distribution and self-service for the various product categories, the individual vendors fade from the scene and the market has a new name: “super-market,” now spelled without the hyphen. 5×7 safety negative by Gottscho-Schleisner.
My mom and dad might have shopped here right before they were married.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Dr Pepper, resurrected.
7th and Cross Streets, Little Rock, Arkansas.
When the building to the right was torn down, a “ghost sign” appeared:
Here’s another one on the Maypearl Feed Store in Maypearl, TX:
And one in Trinidad, CO:
“Ghost signs” are a very popular subject with photographers; some places like San Francisco even have databases of such signs.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
My chaotic evil Paladin travels back in time…
… by 5,000 years.
Stones found in Turkey at the site of a 5,000-year-old burial represent the oldest gaming tokens ever located. To me it looks like incontrovertible proof that the ancients played D&D and Warhammer.
Click through for more from Discovery.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Tools
Original image found at Flickr.
Wooden viking tool chest complete with over 200 implements found in 1936, in a bog on the island of Gotland at the site of what was once Lake Mästermyr . There are axes, hammers, tongs, punches, plate shears, saw blades, files, rasps, drills, chisels, knives, awls and whetstones among the 200 objects that were found in the chest. There are also raw material and scrap iron as well as finished objects such as locks, keys, a frying pan, cauldrons and bells. As noted, the 1000-year-old artifacts look as though they could have been made today.
Of course, several of the voices in my head immediately objected to this informative and interesting historical tidbit, and demanded that I post this as well:
“Cow Tools” – From “The Far Side” by Gary Larson
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The American West in Sepia
19th century housing: Members of Clarence King’s Fortieth Parallel Survey team explore the land near Oreana, Nevada, in 1867.
Taken from an article in The Guardian, which has many, many more of these captivating images from the early settlement and exploration of the United States. I recommend a visit.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Come knock me up tomorrow morning, I’ll give ye sixpence!
Sounds terrible, right? Not over in the UK. “A knocker-up (sometimes known as a knocker-upper) was a profession in England and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution and at least as late as the 1920s, before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable. A knocker-up’s job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time.” (Wikipedia)
Knocker-up using a bamboo pole to rap at an upper window
Mary Smith of Limehouse Fields, who was known for using a pea shooter.
Caroline Jane (Granny) Cousins – you can read much about her at Dorset Ancestors.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya camii) 1888-1910, İstanbul
This interior shot of the Ayasofya Mosque predates its conversion into a secular museum in 1935. The calligraphic roundels in front bear the names of Mohammed and Allah – others carried the names of various caliphs. If Brown’s new novel Inferno ever gets made into a movie, this building will likely get some additional exposure; if you ever get to Turkey, it’s definitely worth a visit.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
New York Street Scene, ca 1930s
There’s a superb colorizer haunting reddit these days – I’d love to see him/her take a crack at this one.
I love old pictures of New York; you can take the boy out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the boy.
Charles Addams, most famous for his cartoons in The New Yorker and elsewhere, did some lovely cartoons about the city – one in particular comes to mind every time I see a picture of the elevated trains that used to run up and down Manhattan:
The 3rd Avenue El –
“Sometimes, on nights like this I can still hear it rumble by.”
The Old Wolf has spoken.
1922: Auto repair class
High school girls learning auto mechanics. The revolution begins.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 