This classic Depression Era soup kitchen was operated by gangster Al Capone in 1933. The Chicago location was financed by the underworld mobster to help improve his image with the public during the high time of unemployment in the Midwest. This photograph is printed from a negative.
Little barefoot boy in the Arkansas Ozarks taken by famous Farm Security Administration Photographer Arthur Rothstein. The photographer spent much of his time in the 1930's documenting the Depression in Oklahoma, Arkansas & Texas. This is a reprint of the original photograph taken in 1936.
The end of Prohibition meant a new life fpr the Atlas Brewing Cpmpany. As a marketing tool they contracted with Pennsylvania Airlines to deliver a first shipment of their brew to the Nation's Capitol. This photograph shows the beer being off loaded from the airplane at Washington D.C. This shipment of beer was to be a gift to each Congressman who voted to repeal the Volstad Act. The photo was taken April 7, 1933 .
Historic photo looking down Market Street at Powell Street in San Francisco, California towards the Bank of America tower in the 1930's.
Unique photo of kitty cat sipping beer while the patron was asleep in a New York City Irish bowery bar.
High School Boys Cooking Class offered through the public schools in Northern Minnesota in 1938 were to teach boys the basics of cooking in preparation for camping trips to the North Woods and as future husbands. Note the cutesy aprons.
Wonderful Russell Lee FSA photograph taken in 1936 of the Brazos Fish Market located in Waco, Texas. Lee often used signs & advertising to help capture the moment in his classic images from the Depression Era. Note the Budweiser and Faust Beer advertisements along with Coca-Cola. This photograph was originally printed from negative.
President (Silent Cal) Calvin Coolidge & his wife Grace visited Rapid City, South Dakota in August of 1927. Coolidge posed next to a Sioux Indian from the nearby reservation where Custer's Last Stand took place. Coolidge was in South Dakota to dedicate the new Mount Rushmore Memorial as the carving began.
An uncommon black & white photograph of flier Charles A. Lindbergh in his flying suit in front of the Ryan Monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. This image was captured on his U.S. tour which he made during the summer of 1927 after his famous non-stop flight across the Atlantic in May, 1927.
Shown here is the 50th anniversary Coca-Cola delivery truck. Photo taken in 1936 at unknown bottling plant.
Coca-Cola Banquet with a giant coke bottle as a centerpiece was probably held for Coca-Cola Bottling Plant employees in Tampa, Florida in the 1940's.
Denison, Texas Chief of Police Wade Taylor and his shiny new Ford Squad Car.The vehicle is a 1932 Ford Model 18 (V-8). The chief poses with his new Ford after he was reputed to have chased the notorious Clyde Barrow Gang out of this North Texas community and across the Oklahoma line. Chief Taylor reported to the citizens of Denison that the new car performed much better than his old squad car and was safe at high speeds.
Multi-tasking auto assembly workers on the Dodge Motor Company assembly line in Detroit, Michigan in 1936. Looks like a truck and then a car coming down the line?
Looking west on Pacific Avenue in Downtown Dallas, Texas. St. Paul is to the right and Live Oak is to the left. Photo taken in 1920's.
Nostalgic scene in this 1920's photograph of a hotel called the Dreamboat located somewhere in the South. Great signs are prominent advertising for Royal Crown Cola, Coca-Cola and 666 Cold & Fever Tonic (Walgreens).
Vendor for Wainwright's Eskimo Pies takes a welcome break from hocking the ice cream at a local carnival in Donaldsonville, Louisiana in the 1930's. The hard times of the Depression in a poor state like Louisiana made for a tough job especially in the hot summer sun.
A Farm Security Administration photograph of one of the first public school hot lunch programs was taken by an unidentified FSA photographer in 1940. The location for the photograph was a rural school in Iowa. Through the daily service of warm, nourishing food, prepared by qualified, needy women workers, the WPA made is possible for many underprivileged children grow into useful, healthy citizens of the future.
Image of children gathered around a Good Humor Ice Cream truck in the 1920's. In 1920, Harry Burt invented the Good Humor Ice Cream Bar and patented it in 1923. Burt sold his Good Humor bars from a fleet of white trucks like this equipped with bells & uniformed drivers. Good Humor is still sold today under the Breyers label.
Joe Louis, born in Alabama, moved to Detroit when he was twelve. With a friend's encourgagement, Louis used his weekly fifty cents for violin lessons to rent a locker at Brewsters Gym, where he developed an athlete's physique and a competitor's instinct. Coming off a strong showing in the 1934 Golden Gloves final, he attracted a manager & trainer who thought he could be a World Champion Boxer. The rest is history.
A Marmon Convertible Coupe is shown here in front of a dealership in the late 1920's. The automobile brand name was manufactured by the Nordyke Marmon & Co. of Indianapolis, Indiana from 1902 through 1933 and a brand of Texas made premium trucks from 1963 through 1997 in Denton, Texas. The 1909 Marmon Wasp was the first winner of the Indianapolis 500 motor race. In 1929 due to the stock market crash, hard times were felt by the manufacturer and Marmon discontinued auto production in 1933. The Marmon Automobile Company was credited with introducing the first rear view mirror, the first V-16 engine and the first use of aluminum parts for auto production.
This photo from 1941 shows Okies heading west on Route 66 traveling through Amarillo, Texas. With a mattress on top of the car and an extra can of oil strapped to the bumper, these Okies are headed to California and the chance of a better life.
