Sometimes we run across photographs with no logical explanation. When there is no news slug we are left to speculate – what is going on here? This is one of those cases.
Besides being identified on the rear as Rita Hayworth and a United Press International photo, there was nothing else written identifying the action or location.
Fortunately entering “Rita Hayworth” and Penguin in a search engine can solve a mystery. Continue reading
There are certainly people who have never seen a pay phone before. And people who are familiar with pay phones may have only seen them with push buttons. Rotary dial phones were replaced in the 1970s by push buttons. Whereas pay phones managed to remain ubiquitous until the 1990s.
Pay phones were once everywhere. You could find them in hotels restaurants, gas stations, drug stores, transportation facilities, office and public buildings and on street corners,
The ad above ran in the September 11, 1971 New Yorker magazine.
In 1970 vandals cost American Telephone and Telegraph $12 million Continue reading
The two illustrations seen here are excerpts from a full page ad. This advertisement comes from the April 27, 1919 New York Sun daily newspaper. Shown is an array of intimates of the late teens that a fashionable woman would wear beneath their clothes.
The uptown location of James McCreery & Co. at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street Continue reading
Our Detroit Publishing Co. photograph is from 1906 and shows Eighth Avenue looking north. It is at this juncture the Ninth Avenue elevated completes its turn from Ninth avenue to Eighth Avenue at 110th Street and proceeds uptown.
As usual there was a postcard issued that almost certainly came from this photograph. The advertising and perspective are exactly the same, but the postcard contains many alterations.
For dramatic effect Continue reading
In this advertisement from The St. Paul Globe of July 18, 1903, Dr. Alfred L. Cole does not explicitly say what condition he is treating in “night losses”, but it sounds extremely perilous.
The mores and morals of the time would not permit the condition to be talked about in polite society.
But, reading between the lines, Dr. Cole proposes to stop men from having wet dreams. Continue reading
Gimbel Brothers Department Store Catalog 1910
What was considered sexy 100 years ago might not draw the same conclusions today.
To look her best, the woman of the late 19th and early 20th century was stuffed into a variety of tight fitting and often times restrictive undergarments.
Much like today with online shopping, store catalogs offered goods of all sorts to the public without the need to first try on the merchandise.
Gimbel Brothers Department Store Catalog 1910
From nightgowns to corsets to petticoats to chemises to reducing garments, women could buy a wide variety of underclothing, never setting foot in a store. Continue reading
Model demonstrating the proper facial use of a vibrator. From National Lampoon, January 1977
Matty Simmons the CEO of National Lampoon and author of If You Don’t Buy This Book We’ll Kill This Dog (Barricade Books), describes in his 1994 memoir the challenges of getting traditional advertisers during National Lampoon magazine’s first decade. Continue reading
Every so often we look back at life in the Unites States 100 years ago. In this case, we were looking at Buffalo, New York.
Besides the household prices for groceries, we glanced quickly at a few news items from the Buffalo Evening News newspaper for February 21, 1924.
Buffalo was dealing with a major blizzard. Continue reading
This scene shows the cowcatcher intersection at 23rd Street where Fifth Avenue and Broadway intersect.
Our photograph is from about 1897, before the famous Flatiron Building was constructed in 1902. Continue reading
Emil Otto Hoppé a famous German-born, British artist / photographer was tasked by The Daily News in 1920 to find The American version of the Modern Venus. The winner of the contest would become Hoppé ‘s model. Continue reading