In his November 1933 proposal to create the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in partnership with the Library of Congress and the American Institute of Architects, the National Park Service’s Charles E. Peterson sounded this call to action: “Our architectural heritage of buildings from the last four centuries diminishes daily at an alarming rate. The […]
Many of those around the world watching news coverage of the terrible fire at Notre-Dame in Paris likely either reflected on a visit to the cathedral in their lifetime or felt a pang of regret at having not made it there before the fire. I personally thought back on my trip to Notre Dame as […]
The following is a guest post by Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. A good research quest often leads you to unexpected finds and drops you right at the edge of a rabbit hole. While working through the topic of listening (the subject of a previous blog post), two World War I posters […]
In this installment of Double Take, the blog series where we take a much closer look at images in our collections, we dig a little deeper into the story behind the photo below, featuring a truck – and a trunk! – of unusual design: The White House is in the background, so I know we […]
Perhaps it’s the impending arrival of April 1, but my first thought upon looking at this photo, placed on our “Caught Our Eyes” sharing wall by reference librarian Jon Eaker, was that it was an April Fool’s joke. As is sometimes the case with photos in our Harris & Ewing collection, where captions range from […]
The following is a guest post by Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. It’s been quite the musical month at the Library: just this past week, the newest additions to the National Recording Registry were announced. This made me think of music’s role in my day-to-day life. Sing-alongs with 2013’s Gershwin Prize honoree […]
Details about the life of Irish American photographer Timothy O’Sullivan are sparse. He was either born in New York or emigrated with his parents at the age of 2 from Ireland in 1842. He died at the age of 42 from tuberculosis. He left few documents in his own hand, but the photographs he took […]
As we approach the end of the winter season here in Washington, D.C. — and the threat of snow that comes with it — we thought it would be fitting to recognize the efforts of those who have helped keep our local roads safe during and after storms. Consider the crews shown in the two […]
The following is an interview with researcher Kate Heard, Senior Curator of Prints at Royal Collection Trust. Melissa: Thank you for participating in this interview. We always enjoy having you in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room, and we’re delighted to have this opportunity. Could you start by describing where you work? Kate: I’m Senior […]
Digital Conversion Technician Brittany Long added this image to our “Caught Our Eyes” sharing wall a few months ago, with a two-word comment: “Representation Matters.” Brittany encountered the image while working on a team that is going negative by negative through a segment of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection to make […]