Capitol building

This week I have the last set of amateur photographs from the 1940s Washington D.C. class trip. The rest of the album is filled with professionally shot souvenir photos; they’re very interesting, although several of them are quite tiny. I’ll most likely be sharing them at a future date.

Washington Monument

I also wanted to note that the last names of the people in the photos are only my best guess because the handwriting isn’t entirely clear to me. Last week I resorted to using the last initials of Bill Hares, Barbara Dorenay, and Shirley Mekeek. [I hope I got those names right!]

Marie Salvage and June Taft

Marie & June at the Lincoln Memorial

Mt. Vernon

A park

Roses at General Lee’s home

Amphitheater at Arlington Memorial [Dedicated May 1920]

Shirley Mekeek

Finally, looking through all these photos made me curious to know more about what the U.S. capital looked like in the late 1940s. Perhaps not surprisingly, there seems to be quite a lot of resources with photos and other information — Boundary Stones, the DC history blog of public radio station WETA, and Ghosts of DC are only two examples. I also discovered this short video on the Washingtonian‘s web site. It’s colorized, and while it’s impossible to say what part of the 1940s it dates from, there’s no question that the streets around the capitol building look (and sound) very different these days!