Orange, Texas, May 1943, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Orange, located on the Sabine River, is a deep-water port to the Gulf of Mexico. (It is also the easternmost city in Texas.) A U.S. naval station opened there during WWII, providing a significant boost to the local economy.
Billboard, Harlingen, Texas, May 1943, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Fresh salad and a beer. . .
Mexican-American home in Houston, Texas, April 1973, by Danny Lyon for the DOCUMERICA project, via The U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr (all three photos here).
Lyon made a series of 21 black and white photographs in East Texas in 1973. “They document the environments remaining from the 19th century in terms of architecture, commerce and lifestyles,” according to their original captions. “The pictures also compare the contemporary city showing displacement of the unique by the ordinary and noting current urban problems.”
Above: houses in the Fifth Ward, Houston. Click on the images to enlarge them.
DOCUMERICA was an photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1972 to 1977, it hired over 100 photographers to “document subjects of environmental concern.” They created an archive of about 80,000 images.
In addition to recording damage to the nation’s landscapes, the project captured “the era’s trends, fashions, problems, and achievements,” according to the Archives, which held an exhibit of the photos, “Searching for the Seventies,” in 2013.
North (back) side of Rode-Kothe House, Cherry Spring, Gillespie County, Texas, May 29, 1936, by Richard MacAllister for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).
The HABS says the limestone house was at least partly built in 1855 by German immigrant Dietrich Rode. (He completed it in 1879.) Rode was one of the founders of nearby Fredericksburg, as well as Cherry Spring. He was also a lay Lutheran minister and a teacher, first in his students’ homes at night and then on the second floor of his ranchhouse shown here.
The house may still stand near Christ Lutheran Church, which Rode helped found, but I cannot find a current picture of it.
The HABS says the building was “[s]ited to dominate its surroundings.”
enclos*ure 