Washington Boarding Houses in WWII: Photos from 1943

With the ridiculous rise in cost of living here in DC, maybe we should go back to the time of boarding houses.

We came across some great photos of boarding house living in Washington during World War II. Below are some we want to share with GoDCers. These photos were taken by Esther Bubley in January 1943.

Girl in the doorway of her room at a boardinghouse

Pearl Ginsburg refused to have her boardinghouse rent raised

Those who are not too modest save time by tripling up in the use of the boardinghouse bathroom

This girl met her husband at the boardinghouse. When he was drafted, she moved back into her old room. His pictures decorate the dresser and wall

The schedule for use of the boardinghouse bathroom is worked out so that each person has eight minutes in the morning. It is social suicide to ignore the schedule and cause a tie-up like this

Two girls looking at pictures in their room in a boardinghouse

The proprieter of this boardinghouse watches the service at dinner

A clerk in the U.S. Navy Department reading in his room in a boardinghouse

Source: Library of Congress

You can check out more of them here.

2 thoughts on “Life in a Washington Boarding House: Esther Bubley’s 1943 Photos”

A wonderful view of boarding house living is in the great science fiction film – “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The setting is Washington, DC. The establishing shots are of DC but was the rest of it filmed there?

The photo curators at the Library of Congress have a multi-page write-up Esther Bubley. It describes how photos like this taken in her free time while working in a D.C. government job shooting microfilm helped launch a career as a professional photographer that eventually included assignments for Life and Ladies’ Home Journal: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/bubleyintro.html

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