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20 Rarely Seen Photos Of America In The 1950’s Show How Different Life Was Before
The 1950’s are often viewed as a golden era in U.S. history, a time of happiness and prosperity, despite the threat of nuclear annihilation, racial segregation and the looming Cold War.
While most photos from the time are in black and white, color photography was still a relative novelty at the time and the film was quite expensive for regular people, the photos below are in glorious color. This means that they are more relatable, and makes the period feel closer to us than ever.
Many of the photos were collected by Denis Fraevich, a New Yorker of Russian descent who loves to bring the era back to life. “The pictures were found at auctions, flea markets and yards, digitized and posted on the Internet,” he told Bored Panda. “Someone's happy life, someone's dreams, important events, holidays and travel, for some reason were thrown into the garbage and became penny goods in a neighborhood sale. Seeing this is incredibly sad, but thanks to enthusiasts who buy and digitize old slides, we can raise the curtain of time and look at that era through the eyes of ordinary Americans.”
It is Denis' hobby to search for these photos, he is fascinated by all things Americana and loves history, abandoned places and as you can see in many of the photos, classic American cars. “I am amazed at how often a car is present in the frame,” he said. “They obviously occupied a much more important position in the life of an American than in our time. Today, it is much less likely that someone would take pictures of their car or television.” Denis works as a Russian-speaking tour guide in NYC and has a fascinating blog, which you can find here. (Translate it from Russian)
Scroll down to check out the pictures below, it might just inspire you to dig out that old leather jacket and the Brylcreem!
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Colored Entrance, Alabama, 1956
Ladylike In NYC, 1958
My Very Cool Grandpa In The 1950s Holding A Fish, Smoking A Cigarette, With A Book Tucked Into His Pants And Cigarette Pack In His Sleeve
A Drink, A Cigar And Not Giving A Good Goddamn, 1950s
My Grandma Had Such A Gorgeous Smile. 1950's
An Officer With Hot Foot Teddy, The Real-Life Inspiration For Smokey The Bear, 1950
Daytona Beach,1957
James Dean At A California Gas Station With His Silver Porsche 550 Spyder, Named "Little Bastard," Just Hours Before His Fatal Crash. September 30, 1955
Store Front, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
Girl And Her Grandmother Window-Shopping In Mobile, Alabama, 1956
Anne St. Marie, New York City, 1959
Alabama, 1956
The Streets Of San Francisco. 1957
Girl Portrait. Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956
At The Party, 1956
Showgirls Playing Chess Backstage At The Latin Quarter Nightclub - New York, NY (1958)
Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
This is the s**t we mustn't forget, especially in this day when people want to keep telling us we need to get back to some imaginary "good old days".
A Slightly Surrealistic Photo Of My Grandma And Some Dude Somewhere In Florida, 1957
South Side Snack. 1953, Chicago
Child In A Car Seat
It’s only point was to have a place to put the child while you drove. Safety wasn’t even considered!
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Victim of the "Nanny State". We all grew up in such "dangerous" environment and having to overcome such obstacles, it made us more alert, but creative as well to get along. Today's cotton wooled kids have become more narrow minded consumers than wide ranging creative thinkers. This device is evolution. God never gave us total comfort after eviction from paradise. Mistakes are there to be made, REPEATING them is criminal intent. Interesting to see a dummy crash test with that thing.
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The rod between the legs. If that's a boy baby, and the car brakes badly!!!!
That was a fabric strap. But still..............
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We had this when I was a kid. That's a little steering wheel in the front with a horn button in the center.
I had my son in a seat just like this. I got in an accident, my car spun out in the rain, hit a stop sign and my son stayed in the car seat unhurt. So it did do its job.
They were used only so the kid could look out the window. Put it in the front seat in case they had to stop quickly then the driver could stick out their arm and save you from going through the wind shield.
Obviously back then kids car seats weren't for safety.. they were just convenient seats for babies.
it was not a security thing, instead of holding your baby on your knees you sat him in a small seat...
I remember that if you had a little baby, to keep it in a basket on the floor. Then, when baby starts to crawl towards the foot pedals, it's time to put it in one of these.
Pointless, yes! But, during these times they weren't built for safety, it was a device so the child could see around him while riding in a car.
Someone, at some point, is gonna think that's an ipad and suggest this family are time travellers from the future
Everyone's talking about safety, well this seat is probably safest with that bar. Think about it; no airbags, no seatbelt, no traction control, no ABS, barely crumple zones, really thin tires, the roof would just collapse in a rollover, ETC. ETC.
Helpfully raises the child to the level of the windshield ... for safety!
I would say that’s a 1959 Cadillac 4 window Sedan Deville. (Flat Top)
all these comments are about the safety of a kid who is IN the seat....my kids would have slid and wiggled their way right outta that thing within the first mile.
There were not as many cars on the road then, and not so many doing drugs!
That’s a 1959 model car 36,223 people died in car crashes that year as opposed to 37,133 in 2017 with about 30,000,000 cars on the road then and 143,000,000 today.
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When I was that size, we kids stood up on the front seat so we could see out the window. Not much concern about safety back then.
I remember my little brother sitting in one just like that and honking that stupid little horn non-stop! LOL!
That thing look dangerous. Glad we are wiser, at least on this front.
This type of car seat was still all that was available in 1971. I know, because I had one for my kiddo.
How have we survived this long when at some point in history, we thought THIS was safe? smh
That would do more damage to the kid than sitting in the car without a child seat when in accident.
Weird, huh? I would like to know what accident/death rates were in those days. Of course, most families only had one car, and didn't live on the roads like we do :)
Pointless ? Read Vicky Jerome's comment further up. Better than NOTHING. Yeah, after the Wright Brother's hop on the beach, humanity jumped straight into the 787 Dreamliner and travelled to safe horizons. It's called EVOLUTION, unbeknown to a lot of narrow minded consumer ME-ntals.
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Only, when completely uncontained, say sitting on the seat, unrestrained. Check Vicky Jerome's comment a bit further up. Better than absolutely nothing.
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My mom's got an old pic of my brother in one of these contraptions. He's 44...
No law. We didn't even have seatbelts. It just gave the kid a place to sit. Otherwise he would stand beside his mom while she drove.
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My brother and I used to ride in the bed of the truck. The only rule was to stay off the wheel wells as that "was not safe".
No this wasn’t safe but people also need to remember that cars were built like tanks back then. Nothing like today.
You obviously don't understand anything about the physics of energy absorption of impacts. Passengers and Drivers these days only survive better, because the full force of a crash is compensated by the car crumbling up around them. When the "tank" is remaining rigid, the impact force is immediately transferred to the travelling humans and, sure, the remaining g force will have them travelling. That's a reason unrestrained humans were shredded up passing head first through a crumble glass windshield. The "tank" myth remains busted, when one sees 4WD "tanks" absorbing the impact force by rolling unto their roof.
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My mom loved the 1950's in New York City. She got to see the original West Side Story on Broadway and had coffee with the beatniks in Greenwich Village who read poetry out loud to jazz. The city was clean and people looked forward to the future and anyone with a college degree had their pick of jobs. Women went shopping with their best clothes on which often included a mink coat or fox fur wrap. The ladies would have lunch at Schrafft's which also served alcohol. In the early 50's they didn't have to go grocery or errand shopping, all the markets (meat market, flower market, etc.) delivered everything to their maid Virginia through the back kitchen entrance. Were things not as good for minorities? No they were not. Mom was raised by an adored black maid named Virginia who was not permitted by the family to go to her wedding. She always felt bad about that and never understood why things were that way. Later, mom got arrested in the 1960's fighting for integration.
Ahhhh, the 1950"s. Where people looked the other way when they saw children be abused and domestic violence the norm because wives and children were considered "property"
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A golden era for white males. I'm am VERY glad I don't have to have lived in it.
very ignorant comment. plenty of poor white families all across America at that time, and before. yes, segregation was outrageous, no doubt about it.
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Honestly, these photos creep me out. For me, these pictures emphasize society's morbid need for perfection. Fake smiles. Brightly painted, but underdeveloped, technology. Ignorance and contributions to mass discrimination. I'd never want to live in the 1950's.
And you don't think our technology will seem undereveloped in the 2090's? I was a kid in the 50's and it was just fine. The smiles weren't fake -- people in these photos look like they actually did. Why do you think people have changed so much?
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Golden era LOL! Except women and anyone other than a white male. The only decent thing to come out of the 50's was Brown V Board of Education of Topeka.
Beautiful and interesting pictures. I love the fashions of the time.
Awesome photos! It's really a trip back to the past!! One quick question though....are these photos colorized?
No, they're color photos. Typically slides. Color film had been common since the late 30's. More common in amateur photography since it was hard to process, expensive to make large prints, and very expensive to reproduce in print.
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Give us more of such pictorial depiction of different cities across the world. Especially of the South and South East Asia, India, China, the Pacific Rim nations. Worth watching.
Very evocative. I was a kid back then (born 1954) and the clothes and cars bring back fond memories. It really was a good time. Not perfect, no time ever is, but it's an accurate depiction of how people lived at a time when working people were earning middle class incomes for the first time in history. No drug plague, homelessness, mass incarceration. I'm taken by how well everyone is dressed -- it brings back memories, I remember having a coat just like one of the kids -- that changed with the youth rebellion of the 60's and never went back. Otherwise, besides the look of the cars and clothes, it's interesting to look at the buildings and realize one would be very comfortable walking around in that world today, indeed, if you look at some of the streets, they might as well be in 2018 -- not just the old but the modernist architecture.
that's when we used to live in America.its been dead for along time.now we live in the rotting stinking empire,which is collapsing just as all empires do.
We (society in 2018) need more pictures like these from the history of ”black” America. As a ”white” person this is something really lacking in both my education and education in general. These images of that unfortunately separate history of America are affirming of the resilliance and warmth of their lives even though they represent a social injustice we can never repay.
My education had plenty of pictures and even movies about this topic and stop speaking for us white people. Its okay to be white.
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hat's when we used to live in America.its been dead for along time.now we live in the rotting stinking empire,which is collapsing just as all empires do.
Everything was classy and beautiful and pastel. But then you see the segregation. OMG. I think a lot of White people in that time where so brainwashed they thought it was normal. But I hope many understood the madness of it all and wanted change, but couldn't do much about it.
The segregation was in the deep south. When I was growing up it horrified us as much as it horrifies people today. Southerners, of course, thought it was normal. And people *did* do something about it, it was already changing (e.g., Truman had integrated the armed forces and school segregation was ruled unconstitutional) and in a few years Martin Luther King would be marching. In 1965, LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the formal apparatus of Jim Crow was dismantled.
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Make America Great Again people don't realize that back in the day America was only great if you were a white person, especially a white man. Or maybe they do realize that and they just don't care about anyone but themselves. That being said, there are some beautiful photos here.
I'm not sure what "people" you're addressing here. We all fully understand the horrible stuff back then.
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The US led the world in standard of living back then. Most of all I remember it as a time of very little crime and more neighborly than today.
It was just hidden. Domestic violence and child abuse were rampant. Clergy were raping children. No one reported it. Don't scratch below that shiny surface - especially if you aren't a white Christian man.
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My mom loved the 1950's in New York City. She got to see the original West Side Story on Broadway and had coffee with the beatniks in Greenwich Village who read poetry out loud to jazz. The city was clean and people looked forward to the future and anyone with a college degree had their pick of jobs. Women went shopping with their best clothes on which often included a mink coat or fox fur wrap. The ladies would have lunch at Schrafft's which also served alcohol. In the early 50's they didn't have to go grocery or errand shopping, all the markets (meat market, flower market, etc.) delivered everything to their maid Virginia through the back kitchen entrance. Were things not as good for minorities? No they were not. Mom was raised by an adored black maid named Virginia who was not permitted by the family to go to her wedding. She always felt bad about that and never understood why things were that way. Later, mom got arrested in the 1960's fighting for integration.
Ahhhh, the 1950"s. Where people looked the other way when they saw children be abused and domestic violence the norm because wives and children were considered "property"
Load More Replies... A golden era for white males. I'm am VERY glad I don't have to have lived in it.
very ignorant comment. plenty of poor white families all across America at that time, and before. yes, segregation was outrageous, no doubt about it.
Load More Replies... Honestly, these photos creep me out. For me, these pictures emphasize society's morbid need for perfection. Fake smiles. Brightly painted, but underdeveloped, technology. Ignorance and contributions to mass discrimination. I'd never want to live in the 1950's.
And you don't think our technology will seem undereveloped in the 2090's? I was a kid in the 50's and it was just fine. The smiles weren't fake -- people in these photos look like they actually did. Why do you think people have changed so much?
Load More Replies... Golden era LOL! Except women and anyone other than a white male. The only decent thing to come out of the 50's was Brown V Board of Education of Topeka.
Beautiful and interesting pictures. I love the fashions of the time.
Awesome photos! It's really a trip back to the past!! One quick question though....are these photos colorized?
No, they're color photos. Typically slides. Color film had been common since the late 30's. More common in amateur photography since it was hard to process, expensive to make large prints, and very expensive to reproduce in print.
Load More Replies... Give us more of such pictorial depiction of different cities across the world. Especially of the South and South East Asia, India, China, the Pacific Rim nations. Worth watching.
Very evocative. I was a kid back then (born 1954) and the clothes and cars bring back fond memories. It really was a good time. Not perfect, no time ever is, but it's an accurate depiction of how people lived at a time when working people were earning middle class incomes for the first time in history. No drug plague, homelessness, mass incarceration. I'm taken by how well everyone is dressed -- it brings back memories, I remember having a coat just like one of the kids -- that changed with the youth rebellion of the 60's and never went back. Otherwise, besides the look of the cars and clothes, it's interesting to look at the buildings and realize one would be very comfortable walking around in that world today, indeed, if you look at some of the streets, they might as well be in 2018 -- not just the old but the modernist architecture.
that's when we used to live in America.its been dead for along time.now we live in the rotting stinking empire,which is collapsing just as all empires do.
We (society in 2018) need more pictures like these from the history of ”black” America. As a ”white” person this is something really lacking in both my education and education in general. These images of that unfortunately separate history of America are affirming of the resilliance and warmth of their lives even though they represent a social injustice we can never repay.
My education had plenty of pictures and even movies about this topic and stop speaking for us white people. Its okay to be white.
Load More Replies... hat's when we used to live in America.its been dead for along time.now we live in the rotting stinking empire,which is collapsing just as all empires do.
Everything was classy and beautiful and pastel. But then you see the segregation. OMG. I think a lot of White people in that time where so brainwashed they thought it was normal. But I hope many understood the madness of it all and wanted change, but couldn't do much about it.
The segregation was in the deep south. When I was growing up it horrified us as much as it horrifies people today. Southerners, of course, thought it was normal. And people *did* do something about it, it was already changing (e.g., Truman had integrated the armed forces and school segregation was ruled unconstitutional) and in a few years Martin Luther King would be marching. In 1965, LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the formal apparatus of Jim Crow was dismantled.
Load More Replies... Make America Great Again people don't realize that back in the day America was only great if you were a white person, especially a white man. Or maybe they do realize that and they just don't care about anyone but themselves. That being said, there are some beautiful photos here.
I'm not sure what "people" you're addressing here. We all fully understand the horrible stuff back then.
Load More Replies... The US led the world in standard of living back then. Most of all I remember it as a time of very little crime and more neighborly than today.
It was just hidden. Domestic violence and child abuse were rampant. Clergy were raping children. No one reported it. Don't scratch below that shiny surface - especially if you aren't a white Christian man.
Load More Replies...