printingshop

An online search of old newspapers found an ad for S. B. Newman & Co., a printing & bookbinding company located at 617 S Gay St in Knoxville, TN. Given that we appear to be looking at the backside of the business, I think we're just off of Market St SW, in the alley between Church Ave S and Clinch Ave S. That would put us on the backside of the Old Customs House, the first floor of which, according to Wikipedia, was used as a post office until around 1934. Here's the view today in Google Street View. The road's been redone a bit, and the buildings at the end of the alley are gone, but the windows, arches, keystones, etc, of the Old Customs House to our left definitely look right. The Customs House is now home to the East Tennessee Historical Society. I sent them a tweet with a link to this page, figured they might be interested.

severinus, had i seen your comment i wouldn't have filled my sunday afternoon doing the research to prove the same point!

pomonobo productions Heh, well I hope the research was still enjoyable. And nice work with the "today" shot; I would've loved to've stolen that thunder from you too, but being in Seattle I had to settle for Google :)

Thank you both for your interest. This is fantastic information, and I especially enjoy the then-and-now view! I'll be sure the pass this along to my colleagues at the National Postal Museum. Susannah Smithsonian Institution Archives

A curator at the National Postal Museum confirmed the information you found, @severinus. We updated the caption with the location and postmaster's name. Thank you again for your help in identifying this image! Effie Smithsonian Institution Archives

It looks like they're printing four pages on a sheet then cutting the sheet after printing. Comments or corrections are welcomed.

What's the matter with those people? Didn't they have any internets???

The big sheet in the middle column mentions Winston Churchill bidding the Italian people to "oust Mussolini," their fascist dictator. He made that speech on December 23, 1940. During the 1950s and 60s my mother worked here at the Enterprise, writing articles for the social pages. I went inside the building a few times to see her, but in 1959 went in on my own to read an essay I wrote on WBET, the newspaper's radio station.

Please see stumblng.tumblr.com/post/23944336, where I've written a mini-essay on a related photo.

I am so obsesed with the LOC's photo stream

I remember as a kid, I used to see this and people gatherd th read some of the headlines that would appear in the paper! The Brockton Enterprise had been sold out to the the ledger. The Enterprise does not belong to the people of Brockton anymore!

Dartmouth College still runs an excellent Book Arts Workshop with a nice little letterpress facility.

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called people working, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_Indian_Industrial_School

Swang: Thank you! We'll add the additional information to the source data and reload the description.

Great photo, i love it!