While browsing the CityPaper’s Best of 2008 listings—yeah, I know, old news—I stumbled upon David Hall, the winner of the coveted “Best Person to Help You Decorate Your Apartment on the Cheap” award. David Hall is also old news, I suspect, but maybe you didn’t know about all of his online storefronts, which register at varying levels of awesomeness.
Shorpy.com is the most well known, and for good reason: Each day, Hall posts vintage photos with their captions, many of which are D.C.-centric, with some family nostalgia of his own mixed throughout.
Then there’s Vintagraph.com, a trove of vintage graphics (WPA art print posters from the New Deal, WWI and II posters). Personally, I’m a sucker for Plan59.com for its spectacular retro graphics from the 1950s. I could blanket a wall with the mid-century décor shots and just blissfully pretend our apartment was half as cool as these home interiors. BoxofApples.com has, you guessed it, boxes of apples and other produce paraphernalia (of the vintage fruit crate label variety). And for geeks like Noah? Well, there’s PatentRoom.com, featuring illustrations of old patents like airplane models.
On leave from the Style desk at the Washington Post, Hall snags cool images from public domain archives (such as the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Reading Room), snazzes up the shots a bit, then sells prints on the cheap (from around $15).
This is almost as cool as the complete Life archives that just went live. (Woo, nostalgia!) You officially have my permission to shower me with prints from these archives for Christmas.
