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March 1943. "Fort Madison, Iowa. Mr. H.D. Tyres, yardmaster on the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad." Photo by Jack Delano, Office of War Information. View full size.
The most useful and most "borrowed" item of office supply. Unchanged in over 114 years and still going strong.
I keep returning to study this marvelous photograph. It reminds me so much of a Vermeer, especially the composition and the light.
Oh, I hope that radiator works well! I'm imagining how cold that office must be in winter, with all of those windows. Mr. Tyres is wearing what looks to be a warm woolen suit. The fact that he has his hat on indoors has me doubting the radiator's effectiveness in March.
They moved it all down to Brown's Hotel, where lots of them people have been travellin' for quite a spell.
Oh I see what you mean.
You know your job is important when you have three phones on your desk.
I agree with pennsylvaniaproud about the sparse accommodations. But, it's a functional space, with a large desk in front of you and a table behind that spans the width of the room. Plus, you have large windows on at least three sides. Yardmaster H.D. Tyres doesn't seem to need vertical storage and has paper thumbtacked to the wall in only two places. This is all good. But the one overhead light, hanging four feet above the desk, is of limited help, day or night. To make it worse, lightbulbs in 1943 didn't last all that long. I hope there are plenty of replacement bulbs somewhere in that room.
Who needs a computer when you have telephones, signal lamps, and Mr. H.D. Tyres with his decades of experience? Looks like he even had headsets for hands-free telephone operations!
The center with the huge window, left and right also huge windows and the centered table. Even the small and big boxes look left and right almost identical, like mirrored.
It is a very geometric and structured picture. Jack Delano has often had these viewlines in his pictures.
How many of you had the tune run through your head when you read "Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe" ?
The nearest interior decorator. Sparse accommodations here.
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