Thousands Of Depression-Era Photos Of Chicago Released

Yale has released a trove of 170,000 photos that offer an unvarnished view of what the United States looked like during the Depression. The Farm Security Administration sent out a fleet of photographers to document the United States, including Dorothea Lange, whose haunting portraits from the Dust Bowl became iconic. You can now easily sort through all these photos by date, geography and photographer on the new Photogrammar site. There are nearly 2,500 from Chicago.

We've only begun to look through the collection, which shows Chicagoans from all walks of life. There are workers taking the train home at 5 p.m., others in the stockyards and plenty of people enjoying themselves skating or going to the movies. Quite a few of the photos in this collection are centered on black neighborhoods of the South Side—both the slums and some of the better-off neighborhoods of what were then referred to as the "Black Belt."