THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PHOTO ARCHIVE • FRAMED PRINTS • STOCK IMAGES
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- Ah, for the days ...
- Why a reading circle?
- Bulldog caption
- Not a Screen in Sight
- Not the children of PA coal miners
- Good old Golden Rule Days
- V for Victory!
- Keep on truckin'
- Stuy Town/Peter Cooper village
- Wartime Tire Shortage ... But?
- Hey Abbott
- City of birth
- From anarchists to
- Plus 118 years
- 118 Years Later
- Public School 2 on the right.
- This station
- A genuine philanthropist
- Interesting history of Straus's campaign for pasteurization
- Baby Carriage
- The other brother
- Those railings
- +101
- Perennial beauty
- Bulging insteps
- It really is still there ...
- On-time delivery is "foremost" on their minds
- Cherry Blossoms Arrived
- Early Japanese imports
- Still there …
Photos submitted by Shorpy members!
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Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
© 2026 SHORPY INC.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Lerch's: 1917
Washington, D.C., circa 1917. "Dodge Brothers trucks -- Lerch's van." Lerch's billed itself as "Washington's Foremost Cleansers and Dyers." 8x6 inch glass negative. View full size.
On-time delivery is "foremost" on their minds
But if they don't get your clothes out of the van, in a timely manner, you may find yourself "left in the Lerch".
Portable charger
Interesting that people would bring their batteries to a store to charge them. Storage batteries around 1917 were lead/acid or iron/nickel alkaline in thick glass cells -- in other words, always heavy and very caustic if dropped and shattered.
I assume this service was for early lights for homes that did not have power to the house -- cars were still crank start. Shuttling batteries must have been a regular chore.
[In 1917, electric starters for cars had been around for five years. -- Dave]
Achille's Wheels
Some think the proprietor has a squeaky clean reputation, others think he's a heel.
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