[Railroad] [Vernacular] [Illinois] Really Large Illinois and Greater Midwest Vernacular/Occupational Photo Album, 1911-1922

Illinois, 1922. Very Good. [Railroad] [Vernacular] [Illinois] Really Large Illinois and Greater Midwest Vernacular/Occupational Photo Album, 1911-1922

Black leather screw-post album with 'Photographs' in gilt on front. Wear to front and back boards. The first and last pages in album are loose, which for a 100-year-old album 3.5 inches thick is remarkable. The album is 11.5 inches wide by 7.25 inches tall. Black album pages are chipped to edges. Photos all with photo corners, most of which are intact. A few missing photos. Maybe 5% of the photos are mounted upside-down. A decent number of images have dates written on them. There are also some captions, though these appear inconsistently throughout. This album holds approximately 797 photos; of those, 665 are 4.25 x 2.5 inches; 117 are around 3 x 2 inches, and 15 measure 5.5 x 3.5 inches. Very good condition.

With several hundred rail-oriented photos, this mammoth album could almost be termed an occupational album. Interspersed are many vernacular photos of men and women enjoying themselves in locales throughout the Midwest. Of those photos identified by location, Illinois is the most common. We also have images from Green Valley, Monticello, St. Louis, and Bloomington. There are many from the Chicago area. There are likely a few from Florida. The railroad images are mostly construction-based, including surveying, bridge construction, and track work. One might assume that the album was put together by a family of rail workers and their extended family. Many subjects seem to crop up over and over. There are also a handful of glamour shots that look commercial.