D.C., the Industrial City

For the past week or so the historical photoblog Shorpy has been posting some utterly heartstopping photos of life in D.C. during the ’20s. That picture up there is the Key Bridge under construction in 1920. (If you squint, you can see a brave kayaker.) The images come from the National Photo Company Collection, which contains images of the city roughly between 1910 and 1930. You can see Shorpy’s set of the images by clicking here, and it’s well worth it: from pie deliveries to garages to construction sites, the images give you the impression that D.C. was once a town that did nothing but work with its hands. And the image of a near-empty Union Station in 1921 is one of the prettiest things ever.