Solving Mysteries in Historic Photos, Part II

Last time we put out a call to the public to help us solve some mysteries in historic photos, we got a great response. While we have identified many of the people and places in the photos on GVSHP’s growing image archive, some still remain a mystery, and therefore we are putting out a call again.

Some of our great successes? A woman emailed to tell us that her mother was the subject of this photo. Another man let us know this is the only existing photo of his grandfather. Several people wrote in to identify this man as Henry Agard Wallace, who served as FDR’s Vice President from 1941-45, and ran for President in 1948 as the Progressive Party candidate, including Wallace’s grandson! A few years ahead of his time, Wallace advocated for universal government health insurance and an end to segregation at a time when Jackie Robinson was beginning to integrate baseball, and sixteen years before the Civil rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race.

But there are still many unidentified images that we would love to place. We have spent many painstaking hours trying to identify every location of our 700+ images, but some are beyond our knowledge. However, you don’t have to be an architectural historian to recognize your stoop or a distinctive roof or detail on a familiar block. The tiniest little detail like the angle of a sign, or the corner of a distinctive cornice, could help you recognize an exact location.

Some are just being about the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. For instance, who is this LES/East Village mother and child? What happened to this newly arrived immigrant teenage girl? Do her descendants still live in the South Village?

Please check out some of the images below and let us know if you can identify them. Email us at smoskowitz@gvshp.org if you know any of the answers.

Do any of these doorways look familiar?