Photogrammar

Verona, New Jersey. Sewing the edge of an American flag at the Annin Flag Company. Photographer: Marjory Collins, 1943

Photogrammar is a web-based platform (via Yale University) for organizing, searching, and visualizing 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. Today housed at the Library of Congress, the archive primarily depicts life in America during the Great Depression and World War II.

An interactive map puts about 90,000 of those photographs that have geographical information online for you to find. You can search photographer or date, but I imagine most of us will search by location.

I started by looking at Essex County in New Jersey where I grew up.

Americans of various racial groups contribute to the war effort. One worker adjusts the blade in a vise while another reads the angle in a large Eastern plant producing propellers for military aircraft. Curtiss-Wright Propeller Division. Caldwell, New Jersey. Photographer: Howard Liberman, May 1942

I did a search for “Union Station,” that grand train station in Washington, DC, and it came up with 60 photos.

The Roosevelt administration wanted to build support for programs like the New Deal, so they sent photographers all over the United States to document the state of the country.

It is another way to view history.