These 50 amazing color photos were taken by photographers who working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI), capture everyday life in the United States from the Great Depression and World War II.
Shulman's market, on N at Union Street S.W., Washington, D.C. |
Laundry, barbershop and stores, Washington, D.C. |
The main shopping street, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands |
Street in a town Frederiksted, St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands |
One of the steep streets on the hillsides, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands |
House, Houston, Texas |
Sylvia Sweets Tea Room, corner of School and Main streets, Brockton, Massachusetts |
People at the Fair, Pie Town, New Mexico |
Boys playing marbles, FSA labor camp, Robstown, Texas |
Boy building a model airplane as girl watches, FSA camp, Robstown, Texas. |
Grand Grocery Co.], Lincoln, Nebraska |
Street corner, Dillon, Mont. Dillon is the trading center for a prosperous cattle and sheep country/ |
View along US 40 in Mount Vernon Canyon, Colorado |
Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Massachusetts |
Steel and concrete go into place rapidly as a new steel mill takes form, Columbia Steel Co., Geneva, Utah |
Workers leaving Pennsylvania shipyards, Beaumont, Texas |
Japanese-American camp, war emergency evacuation, Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, California |
General store, Chacon, New Mexico |
Plaza of Trampas, Taos Co., New Mexico |
Village of La Alama, near Questa, Taos Co., New Mexico |
Rockefeller Plaza, exhibit for United Nations by OWI, New York, N.Y. |
Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C. |
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A noontime rest for a full-fledged assembly worker at the Long Beach, Calif., plant of Douglas Aircraft Company. Nacelle parts for a heavy bomber form the background. |
Civil Air Patrol Base, Bar Harbor, Maine |
General store, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico |
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arm owned by James Pompey, who 20 years ago came from Italy on the advice of a brother, Southington, Connecticut. People of Finnish, Slav, German, and Polish extraction help him to farm it. |
Children stage a patriotic demonstration, Southington, Connecticut |
The water stretching machine of an eastern parachute manufacturer stretches shroud lines so as to make them more adaptable to the finished product, Manchester, Connecticut |
The utmost precision is required of these operators who are cutting and drilling parachute packs in an eastern factory, Manchester, Conn. Their work is under constant close supervision. |
Sailor and girl at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Washington, D.C. |
Tank crew standing in front of M-4 tank, Ft. Knox, Kentucky |
Men working on telephone lines, probably near a TVA dam hydroelectric plant |
Mrs. Viola Sievers, one of the wipers at the roundhouse giving a giant "H" class locomotive a bath of live steam, Clinton, Iowa |
Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room, C. & N.W. R.R., Clinton, Iowa |
Freight Depot of the U.S. Army consolidating station, Chicago, Illinois |
New River Marine Base, motor detachment, North Carolina |
Workers on the Liberator Bombers, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, Texas |
Co-op orange packing plant, Redlands, Calif. Workman is doing the preliminary sorting, picking out the discards. |
General view of part of the South Water Street freight depot of the Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Illinois |
Santa Fe R.R. freight train about to leave for the West Coast from Corwith yard, Chicago, Illinois |
Grocery store, Mt. Orab, Ohio, Route 74 |
Country school near Portsmouth, Ohio |
Road out of Romney, West Virginia |
Seed and feed store, Lincoln, Nebraska |
Children playing by road near school house, Kansas |
(Photos via The Library of Congress)