When uptown was busy

Looking north in the 100 block of South Main Street in Washington, Pa., circa 1948. (Postcard submitted by Christie Campbell)

July 4, 1976, parade

Lloyd Hampson writes: "My 1976 July 4th image is from a 35mm color slide. That was the Canon-Mac band. I made it from the roof of Gordon Small's office building on East Pike Street in Canonsburg, Pa. I lived in Peters Township then.

Bill Kotyk and I formed Kotyk and Hampson photo lab/studio (1948-1951) while attending Pitt. It was two doors south of the gas station and next door to my Dad Harold's barbershop. Bill passed away in 1996. I now live in Ormond Beach, Fla."

Junior Jitterbugs

This photo was taken at the Brownson House in Washington, Pa., most likely in 1954. It shows the Junior Jitterbugs dance class.

Aviator's visit

The Weller Studio took this photo of Clarence Chamberlin on his appearance in Washington, Pa., April 13, 1928. He most likely landed his plane at the fairgrounds.

Chamberlin was the second person – after Lindbergh – to fly across the Atlantic, leaving from Long Island, N.Y., and arriving in Germany 42 hours later, 43 miles short of intended destination of Berlin. His plane carried a navigator, thus making him the first to fly a passenger across the ocean.

Those were some winters

This photo was taken by Paul Carson in 1979 and shows Dave Budinger cross-country skiing with a young friend on Pennsylvania Gamelands in Morris Township. Carson and Budinger were both staff writers for the Observer-Reporter at the time. The late 1970s were memorable for harsh winters of heavy snowfall and frigid temperatures.

A banker's daughter in the coalfieds

Anne Morgan, a daughter of American financier JP Morgan, center, investigates the working conditions of coal miners in Western Pennsylvania, circa 1911.

Long odds

This photo was taken April 6, 1981, for use on the Rural View page in the Observer-Reporter but was not published at that time.

Night shoot

Bill Kotyk's night shoot of the Canonsburg, Pa., post office was a flash-lighted image. Bill was a junior at Canonsburg High School in 1944 when this was taken. I was a sophomore.
(Submitted by Lloyd Hampson)

The twins

The horizontal and vertical lines, as well as the placement of the pump and the fuzzy depth of field, all make for a nice old portrait of these unidentified girls. It was found in an drawer in The Scalehouse, an antiques and collectibles store in Charleroi, Pa.

Street scene

This photo from the Dan Harbaugh collection is probably from the early 1930s, location unknown. Click on the photo to make it larger, then look at the two women in the background looking at an infant.

Full service

Ray Butler's gas station was located in Canonsburg on the west side of South Central Avenue just a few doors south of Chartiers Creek. I think Bill Kotyk made it with a 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera.
(Submitted by Lloyd Hampson)

The girl in the branches

Anna Margaret Dodd of Amity, Pa., at age 11 in 1881. A note on the back indicates she made the dress shown in the portrait.

Strike up the band

Dan Harbaugh took this photo of a military band performing somewhere in the Washington, Pa., area in 1938.

Then and now

These four photographs were taken from about the same spot on West Pike Street in Canonsburg over a period of more than a century. (Click on photos for larger image.) In the upper left is a view taken before the Great Fire of 1898, when the buildings on the right half of the picture were destroyed. In the photo below it, the south side of Pike Street has been rebuilt, but the street is still dirt, so it is before 1903.

The photo at the top right was taken in 1962, and the one below about 2002. The little hot-dog stand ("Sandwich Shop") and the Gowern Building had been replaced by a parking lot.

(Submitted by Jim Herron)

Haircuts, two bits

Frank Zenner, left, worked for a time at a baber shop operated by Louis Spossey, right, at 349 West Chestnut Street, Washington, Pa., in the early 1930s, when a haircut cost just 25 cents. That area of Chestnut is now occupied by the Post Office. Spossey's son, Sonny, the current mayor of Washington, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a barber with a shop also on West Chestnut. Zenner's son, Donald, also became a barber, operating a shop on South Main Street until just recently.

(Submitted by Donald Zenner)

Howdy, pardner

Little Bennie Welch, of South Side Canonsburg, Pa., got this cowboy outfit on Christmas Day 1913. The photo was taken by Howard M. Taylor on the walk behind the Taylor home.

(Submitted by Jim Herron)

Movie palace

Details on the facade of the State Theater on Franklin Avenue in Aliquippa, Pa.

Jessop Steel, circa 1935

Again, no date or location came with this photo by Dan Harbaugh, but he did an unusual amount of work at Jessop Steel in Washington, Pa., in the 1930s.

The old Gimbel's sign, clock

The old Gimbel's department store, Smithfield Street and Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa., circa 1986. (Scott Beveridge photo)

De plane, de plane!

A grass airstrip, somewhere in Pennsylvania, sometime in the 20th century.

Girls, circa 1912

Howard M. Taylor made this photo of some unidentified girls. The picture is undated, but the flags have 48 stars in a peculiar pattern. Arizona entered the Union in February 1912, and later in the year the pattern of the stars was officially set for the first time. So, one could surmise that the flags were made in 1912.

Also note the swastika pin worn by one of the girls. The sinister meaning did not come about until the rise of Hitler and Nazism in the 1930s.
The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - which means "to be good."
According to About.com, until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power, strength, and good luck.

Even in the early twentieth century, the swastika was still a symbol with positive connotations. For instance, the swastika was a common decoration that often adorned cigarette cases, postcards, coins, and buildings. During World War I, the swastika could even be found on the shoulder patches of the American 45th Division and on the Finnish air force until after World War II.
(Photo submitted by Jim Herron)

All aboard!

The Canonsburg Depot is seen in this RealPhoto post card by Martin Estep. It wasn't mailed, so there is no date, but it had to be before 1909, when the frame depot was replaced with the brick one that is still standing.

The flagman, whose job it was to stop traffic when trains approached, had a little heated shanty across Jefferson Avenue from the station. That probably is him standing in the street.

Trains coming from Pittsburgh stopped at the platform by the station. The Washington-to-Pittsburgh train passengers used the platform on the side of the tracks nearest the photographer. A fence eventually was erected between the tracks to keep reckless people from taking a short-cut across the couplers.

(Photo submitted by Jim Herron)

Man of many contradictions

Charles Everett Manon was married to Anna Dodd, and lived until her death in 1912 in Amity, Pa. He also worked as a dentist, ran a hotel in Ohio, and claimed to have pitched in his youth for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Let's roll

This photo was shot sometime in the 1980s, or maybe earlier, before roller blades became popular. The skater is Shawn Miner.

It was found in our Sports Department in a huge pile of photos from the 1970s and 1980s that is an enormous gallery of bad haircuts.

Winter transport

This photograph of a horse-drawn sled on a snowy day in Canonsburg is from a scrap book assembled by Walter (Dink) McPeake. The location is the intersection of North Central Avenue and College Street with the Canonsburg High School campus in the background.
The high school moved into the nearer building in 1913 and the Moretti statue honoring veterans, placed in 1924, is not there, so the picture had to have been taken some time around the First World War (during which Dink McPeake served in France). The identities of the people in the photo and the reason for the suitcases are not known.
The sled long since has been replaced by pick-up trucks. Considering the steepness of the hill, one wonders how the horse and sled would have gone down North Central or College Street.

The buildings are gone, the sled probably is, too, but the snowy street would be pretty much the same today.

(Photo submitted by Jim Herron)

The comb up

William A. Manon, blacksmith, Washington, Pa.

Posing with the pig, circa 1900

Somewhere in Pennsylvania