Amazing Photos Capture Life in France in the 1900s

The late 1800s saw the beginning of what the French call the Belle Epoque, or ‘beautiful era’. France and its people began to enjoy the benefits of industrialization and modernization: cheap resources, technological developments, new inventions like the telegraph, automobile and mass-produced consumer goods. Living standards improved generally, though France, like its fellow European nations, was still plagued by class disparity and poverty.

The Belle Epoque was also accompanied by a cultural boom, with new artistic movements and entertainment forms like cinema, cabaret and the infamous can-can.

French workplaces and communities were fertile ground for socialists and other radicals, many of whom enjoyed considerable support. By the early 1900s, France had one of the most left-wing governments in Europe: a progressive mix of centrists and socialists. It passed laws guaranteeing freedom of religion and the complete separation of church and state; government funding of churches was abolished and all religious buildings were nationalized.

A series of laws decreed free and compulsory education for all French children, both boys and girls. The government also introduced a progressive income tax, with higher rates for higher earners – a radical innovation for its time.

These amazing photos from fymbremont that show what life of France looked like in the 1900s.

Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, Paris, circa 1900

Beach huts, Deauville, circa 1900

Homage to H.B. de Saussure, Chamonix, circa 1900

Hotel omnibus, circa 1900

Le Mont-Saint-Michel, circa 1900

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The World’s Largest Log Cabin: The History of the Forestry Building in Portland, Oregon

Organizers of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition boasted that the Forestry Building was the world’s largest log cabin, measuring 206 feet long, 102 feet wide and 72 feet high (approximately 7 stories). Its construction was said to have cost approximately $30,000 (about $935,000 today). The lumber baron Simon Benson (1851-1942) paid for most of the giant logs that comprised the building, selected from old-growth trees in Columbia County, Oregon.

Exterior view of the Lewis and Clark Exposition Forestry Building, Portland, 1905.

Architect Ion Lewis (1853-1933), of the noted Portland architectural firm of Whidden and Lewis, designed the Forestry Building for the massive log cabin. Architectural historian Henry Matthews, in his biography of the architect Kirtland K. Cutter said of the Forestry Building: “The Forestry Building at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905 in Portland, Oregon, designed by Ion Lewis of Whidden and Lewis and his young assistant Albert E. Doyle, offered another precedent for rustic architecture on a grand scale. This building, described as the “world’s largest log cabin” or the “Parthenon of Oregon” had an interior “nave” of unpeeled logs forty-eight feet high. This veritable cathedral of giant trees was by far the most popular attraction of the exposition and confirmed the public taste for such architecture.”

The interior of the Forestry Building featured colonnades of 54 massive, unpeeled Douglas Fir logs. The logs supports a 2-story center aisle, cruciform in plan, lit by skylights. The building housed an exhibit highlighting the forestry industry, local flora and fauna and Native American photos and artifacts.

After the 1905 exposition, the building was purchased by the city of Portland, which for many years let it decline and decay. It was nearly lost to fire several times when embers fell on the roof, either from nearby building fires or from wood-stove embers, but quick responses by the fire department kept it going.

In the 1940s, there was talk of actually demolishing the building, which by then had turned into a safety hazard; the balconies had been built with whole logs, which had warped, making them dangerous, and the whole building was like a banquet hall for wood-destroying organisms like bark beetles and termites.

Finally, in the 1950s, the Chamber of Commerce took up a collection to restore the place. By this time, people were starting to realize it was completely irreplaceable. Old-growth timber like what had gone into its construction could still be found, but it was deeper in the forest and less uniform. Finding 52 matching trees would be prohibitively expensive if not impossible to do, and – since the logs would have to be trucked to the site rather than just floated up the river – log-handling systems would have to be engineered to prevent the bark from being scarred by logging equipment.

By the time of the state’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1959, the building was mostly restored to its former glory. It now boasted a “priceless collection of logging and lumbering exhibits, both antique and modern,” according to an Oregonian report. Also on display was another bit of history, the first sheet of commercially produced Douglas Fir plywood ever made, a product of the Autzen family’s Portland Manufacturing Company, produced in 1904.

On August 17, 1964, the Forestry Building’s caretaker locked up for the night at around 5:30. Within 45 minutes, neighbors were noticing that something was wrong. Specifically, the place was on fire, and when the fire crews arrived at around 6:15 it was clear that nothing short of direct divine intervention was going to put it out.

“There was never a hope of saving the building,” the Oregonian reported the next day. “Nothing was saved from the inside.”

Construction of the old Forestry Building, 1904.

A 1904 postcard showing the interior scene in the Forestry Building, with the central colonnade of matched old-growth fir trees.

The immense Forestry Building is shown in 1905 during the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, for which it was built.

Two women sitting in the upper balcony of the Forestry Building, 1905. This image really displays how massive the support logs were.

The interior of the Forestry Building, ca. 1905.

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Vintage Photos of ‘the Worlds of Bertha Shambaugh’ at 219 N Clinton Street, Iowa City

Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh was born in 1871 to Czech-born immigrants Frank and Katherine Horack. The family moved to Iowa City in 1880, when she was nine. In 1888, at the age of 17, she received a camera, becoming a very competent photographer by combining her technical skill in large-format, dry plate photography with a keen aesthetic sensibility.

Bertha took pride in her photography, as evidenced by her mounting, matting and framing of her images. Her most famous photographs document the daily life in the Amana Colonies, the majority taken in 1890-91.

The following year, Bertha met Benjamin Shambaugh, the first superintendent of the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) and an early champion of the importance of local history, marrying him in 1897. Once married, she didn’t use her camera much, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a hand in the photographs taken of her home. She also played an important role at SHSI, editing manuscripts, designing book covers, and collecting manuscripts and objects for the society.

These vintage photos from The State Historical Society of Iowa that show exterior and interior of Bertha Shambaugh’s house at 219 N Clinton Street, Iowa City in the late 19th and early 20th century.

A view of the Horack family's sitting room, which contains numerous hallmarks of Victorian interior decorating. An easel displays a print of a peasant woman and child, circa 1887-1889

A view of the facade of the Horack home, possibly in early spring or late fall, circa 1887-1889

A view of the Horack family's parlor with wicker chair, circa 1887-1889

Horack house, dining area with a dining table and buffet to the right, circa 1887-1889

A view of the parlor with the Splendid stove to the right and the roll top desk to the left. In the center is an upholstered rocking chair, circa 1888-1889

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Amazing Photographs Capture Street Scenes of Sydney From the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

These amazing photographs were taken by Frederick Danvers Power from between 1898-1926. The photos show street scenes of Sydney, Australia including pedestrians on King Street, George Street, Pitt Street, plus horsedrawn vehicles and activities on York and Castlereagh Streets, including the delivery of ice, bottle and gas cylinders.

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Amazing Vintage Photographs of Amsterdam Taken by George Hendrik Breitner From the 1890s to the 1910s

George Hendrik Breitner (September 12, 1857 – June 5, 1923) was a Dutch painter and photographer. An important figure in Amsterdam Impressionism, he is noted especially for his paintings of street scenes and harbors in a realistic style: wooden foundation piles by the harbor, demolition work and construction sites in the old center, horse trams on the Dam, or canals in the rain. Breitner saw himself as “le peintre du peuple”, the people’s painter, and preferred to work with working-class models: laborers, servant girls and people from the lower class districts.

By 1890, cameras were affordable, and Breitner became very interested in this particular instrument that could help provide reference materials for his paintings. The discovery in 1996 of a large collection of photographic prints and negatives made it clear that Breitner was a talented photographer of street photography. He took various pictures of the same subject, from different perspectives or in different weather conditions. On other occasions, Breitner used photography for general reference, to capture an atmosphere, a light effect or the weather in the city at a particular moment.

Take a look at these 28 stunning vintage black and white photographs of the streets and people of Amsterdam from the 1890s to the 1910s taken by Breitner:

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“Girls ‘N’ Axe”: 30 Vintage Photos of Victorian and Edwardian Women Posing With Their Guitars

The guitar is probably the instrument with the most slang words, which gives it another layer of ‘cool’ in many people’s eyes. The ‘Axe’ – or ‘Ax’, depending on whom you ask – is possibly the most common slang word for a guitar.

Surprisingly, the term dates back to the mid-1950s when jazz musicians used it as a slang word for saxophone. Over time, it became a go-to term for the electric guitar.

Before the term, here is a set of elegant photos that shows women with their guitars from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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33 Vintage Photos of Japanese Women Dressing in Kimono in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

The kimono is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a T-shaped, wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right. The kimono is traditionally worn with a broad sash, called an obi, and is commonly worn with accessories such as zōri sandals and tabi socks.

Kimono life in old Japan

Kimono have a set method of construction and are typically made from a long, narrow bolt of cloth known as a tanmono, though Western-style fabric bolts are also sometimes used.

There are different types of kimono for men, women and children, varying based on the occasion, the season, the wearer’s age, and - less commonly in the modern day - the wearer’s marital status. Despite perception of the kimono as a formal and difficult to wear garment, there are types of kimono suitable for every formality, including informal occasions. The way a person wears their kimono is known as kitsuke.

In the present day, the kimono is not typically worn as everyday dress, and has steadily fallen out of fashion as the most common garment for a Japanese person to own and wear. Kimono are now most frequently seen at summer festivals, where people frequently wear the yukata, the most informal type of kimono; however, more formal types of kimono are also worn to funerals, weddings, graduations, and other formal events. Other people who commonly wear kimono include geisha and maiko, who are required to wear it as part of their profession, and rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, who must wear kimono at all times in public.

Despite the low numbers of people who wear kimono commonly and the garment's reputation as a complicated article of clothing, the kimono has experienced a number of revivals in previous decades, and is still worn today as fashionable clothing within Japan.

A set of colorized photos from Okinawa Soba (Rob) that shows what kimono life in old Japan looked like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A couple of dancing girls taken in a 19th century Yokohama studio

Adapting a hallway carpet to human bondage for the sake of fashion

Adjusting the ties of the bride's kimono

An obi mechanic replacing a rusty bolt

Dying kimono fabrics. Textile art for geisha and maiko

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35 Amazing Vintage Photographs Record Life in Wyoming From Between the 1900s and 1910s

Laura Webb Nichols (1883–1962) got her first camera on her 16th birthday, October 28, 1899, as a gift from Bert Oldman, a miner who would become her first husband the following year and the subject of many of her early photographs.

The earliest photographs are of her immediate family, self-portraits, and landscape images of the cultivation of the region surrounding the mining town of Encampment, Wyoming. In addition to the personal imagery, the young Nichols photographed miners, industrial infrastructure, and a small town’s adjustment to a sudden, but ultimately fleeting, population increase. The images chronicle the domestic, social, and economic aspects of the sparsely populated frontier of south-central Wyoming.

As early as 1906, Nichols was working for hire as a photographer for industrial documentation and family portraits, developing and printing from a darkroom she fashioned in the home she shared with her husband and their children. After the collapse of the copper industry, Nichols remained in Encampment and established the Rocky Mountain Studio, a photography and photofinishing service, to help support her family. Her commercial studio was a focal point of the town throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Elva and Carrie Hinman, 1902

Mabel Wilcox, 1902

1902

Bert Oldman, 1906

Nora and Irwin Fleming, 1906

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Vintage Photographs Show German Women Practicing Swedish Gymnastics in Hamburg From the Early 20th Century

These photographs were taken between 1902 and 1910 by Heinrich Hamann in Hamburg, Germany. As a keen gymnast, Hamann portrayed many athletes in action. Here, German women exercising Swedish Gymnastics in a sports hall and on the Heiligengeistfeld (German: “field of the Holy Spirit”) in Hamburg’s St. Pauli quarter.

During the 19th century, Swedish Gymnastics became one of the main models of physical education in the Western world. Swedish Gymnastics (also known as the Swedish Movement Cure) was founded in the early 19th century by poet, student of theology and European languages Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839).

There were two experiences that brought Ling to the world of Physical Culture. Firstly, as a response to Sweden losing territory to Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, Ling the poet began exploring Viking mythology (which was common with the ‘Romantics’ of the time) and decided the nation had degenerated physically from its past ‘glories’. Secondly, whilst studying languages in Denmark, Ling undertook Fencing classes and realized the physical conditioning sessions greatly improved the health of some gout that was in his arm.

Subsequently he decided to familiarize himself with Nachtegall’s Danish Gymnastics and upon returning to Sweden, Ling taught Fencing and began developing the Swedish Gymnastics system. Ling’s Gymnastics were a ‘lighter’ floor style utilizing only the ‘Swedish Bars’ apparatus (invented by Ling) and exercises were chosen for their influence on the body and health. The Swedish Gymnastics system also included manual therapy techniques.

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Vintage Photos of People Posing With Paper Moons in the Early 20th Century

Paper moons were particularly popular from the 1900s through to the 1930s, and especially in the United States, though examples exist from other countries, including Australia.

Paper moons were a feature of traveling fairs, as a photo booth where people would go to have their picture taken by a professional photographer, at a time when photography was not as accessible to everyday people.

The song “It’s Only a Paper Moon” was published in 1933 and the movie Paper Moon was released in 1973, by which time the paper moon photo booths were no longer as common themselves. Developments in photography through the early twentieth century meant more and more people had access to equipment.

Here is a set of vintage photos that shows portraits people posing with paper moons in the 1900s and 1910s.

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