At some point during my adventure to The Shoals with Mr. Billy Reid someone mentioned that the Tennessee Valley Authority was based in the area, which made sense considering the Wilson dam and its lake that we relaxed on.

I remember the TVA from high school history class, though I have to admit I never thought much about it. When I got back to NYC after my trip to Alabama I started to read-up on the subject and I learned a lot. And it wasn’t until recently that I became aware of the role of the TVA during WWII.

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When I was about 15 years-old a family friend gave me $25 of LTV Steel stock. It was of nominal value, but it was an amazing gift — the memory of which has remained with me in to this day. It was especially poignant the day LTV filed for Chapter 11 and closed the last remaining steel mill in Cleveland. That was a disappointing time for me. While LTV was shuttering, the local newspaper — the Cleveland Plain Dealer — ran a series of articles called The Quiet Crisis, about the deflating Northeast Ohio economy and the eroding industrial tax base. It is tough to see things like that happen to any town, especially a town you grew up loving and defending.

I found these beautiful black and white photos from the Library of Congress (via the Detroit Publishing Company archive) and was listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Youngstown and it took me back to the glory days of American industry. Or at least the American industrial 1970s (think Deer Hunter) or when I was a kid in Cleveland in the 1980s. Most of these photos are from Western Pennsylvania — places like Homestead and Braddock — and some are from Cleveland, but the spirit is from Bruce and Youngstown, Steel Town.

Download Youngstown

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One of my favorite things to do is to poke around the photo site Flickr. There are so many amazing old photographs there — down the rabbit hole I go. A wonderful new addition to the community is the UK’s National Archive. They are just getting started and only have about 200+ photos uploaded so far, but there is already some really great stuff in there. I pulled out a selection of favorites for your enjoyment and posted them below. If you are seeking nostalgia and inspiration, click on over. [National Archives UK on Flickr]

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The Taschen New York store is directly across the street from my office and sometimes when I need to clear my head I’ll trot over there to flip through some of their beautiful books and drift off into another world. After I posted the old Kodachromes of L.A., a few people pointed me in the direction of Los Angeles, Portrait of a City and I was immediately sucked in to the amazing photography of an amazing city.

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The New York Public Library has an excellent collection of images by Lewis Wickes Hine (Documentary Photographs, 1905-1938). The photoset focuses mainly on labor and immigrant life in New York (and throughout the East Coast). The images seem to earnestly embody all of the early 1900s cliches (newspaper boys, tenement baseball, iron workers on buildings) you could shake a stick at. That said, I think the photos are amazing and show the growth and development of a country and a group of people. Some of my favorite images below and the full set can be seen here.

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It is obvious that David Neville and Marcus Wainwright — the guys behind Rag & Bone — have great taste. Practically all of the clothing the brand turns out ends up on my wish list and with the opening of the company’s new SoHo store, you can add art to that list. The Mercer Street shop is currently featuring an installation of photos titled “Workspace,” from photographer Joseph Holmes. The beautiful images center around — you guessed it — people’s desks, which often end up being cluttered workbenches and messy industrial nooks around New York City. Holmes (pictured here at the Rag & Bone party this past week with actress Sienna Miller and Messers Wainwright and Neville) grew up in a factory town in Pennsylvania and has a talent for showing the beauty in industrial aesthetics. The full Workspace exhibit can be seen online here, or take a walk over to Rag & Bone at 119 Mercer Street in New York.

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