From the Flickr Commons thread highlighting some of the remarkable images of bridges across the Commons:

Castle and suspension bridge, Conway (i.e. Conwy), Wales, ca. 1890–ca. 1900 (more about the Conway bridge).	Library of Congress
Suspension bridge, Niagara, ON, 1869, designed by John Roebling (before the Brooklyn Bridge), photographed by William Notman.	Musée McCord Museum
Templand Bridge, Cumnock, Scotland, ca. 1890–ca. 1900.	Library of Congress
The Brooklyn Bridge in 1905, printed in 1977.	George Eastman House
The Ness Road Bridge in Inverness, Scotland, between 1890 and 1900; the bridge was demolished in 1961.	Library of Congress
The 14th-century Pont Valentré, Cahors, France, June 1902, photographed by Eugène Trutat.	Bibliothèque de Toulouse

Portrait of strongman Don Athaldo

Powerhouse Museum

Bordoni

Library of Congress

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son

Smithsonian Institution

Ida Fieldman, March 1945

Jewish Women’s Archive

Bath attendant Stella, Lysekil, Sweden

Swedish National Heritage Board

Laplander

New York Public Library

Ella Wesner, male impersonator

George Eastman House

Miss Estelle Doray, snowshoer, Montreal, Quebec, 1924

Musée McCord Museum

A child dressed in uniform, 1915

Australian War Memorial

Add the portraits you’ve found in The Commons to the Flickr Commons discussion group thread for portraits.

The Commons Galleries: Early colour photographic processes in The Commons on Flickr – featuring Lú_’s curation

Applied colour, Southworth & Hawes, ca. 1850 … with additional colour provided by the effect of time on metal.

George Eastman House

Hand-tinted, ca. 1875

State Library of New South Wales

Photochrom prints, also called Aäc, are ink-based images produced though “the direct photographic transfer of an original negative onto litho and chromographic printing plates.” – Library of Congress

Library Of Congress

Hand-tinted, 1900

Brooklyn Museum

Autochrome, ca. 1910 Autochrome is an additive color ’screen-plate’ process: the medium contains a glass plate, overlaying random mosaic of microscopic grains of potato starch, with lampblack filling the space between grains, and an impermeable black-and-white, panchromatic silver halide emulsion. – Wikipedia

George Eastman House

Glass Paget plate phototransparency, Frank Hurley, 1915 The system used two glass plates, one of which was the colour screen plate while the other was a standard black-and-white negative plate. The colour screen plate comprised a series of red, green and blue filters, laid down in a regular pattern of lines to form a réseau, or matrix. – Wikipedia

State Library of New South Wales

Tricolor Carbro process, Nickolas Muray, 1931

George Eastman House

The Commons Galleries – featuring Mazarine’s curation

Mazarine says: This is the way to get your groceries home.

State Library of Queensland, Australia

A proud cyclist.

State Library and Archives of Florida

Vacationing by bike.

Bibliothèque de Toulouse

A lovely way to see the countryside…

Bibliothèque de Toulouse

Ride your bike to the docks, sail away.

Nantucket Historical Association

Work on your form, kids.

Library of Congress

View the full gallery here to leave your comments!

The Commons Galleries – featuring pennylrichardsca’s curation

The children of strikers in Lawrence MA were sent to live with families in New York. It meant they had more adequate material care than their parents could then provide, but it also meant a poignant photo opportunity.

Library of Congress

Coal miners in Lancashire were striking in 1912; their daughters marched in support.

Library of Congress

Sylvia Pankhurst was a life-long protester on many issues, but on this day in 1932 her specific cause was protesting English policy in India. (Notice the Indian women behind her.)

Nationaal Archief

The Jarrow March was a 1936 march to protest extreme poverty and unemployment in North East England. About 200 marchers walked the 300 miles from the town of Jarrow to London, along with their MP, “Red Ellen” Wilkinson.

National Media Museum

January 26, 1938, was the sesquicentennial of British colonization in Australia, and was declared an Aboriginal Day of Mourning, a day to demand full citizenship rights for aboriginal Australians.

State Library of New South Wales

A feminist protest in Amsterdam, 1981, in favor of abortion rights.

Nationaal Archief

View the full gallery here to leave your comments!

The Commons Galleries – featuring Brenda Anderson’s curation

I like the scale of these shots…

Bibliothèque de Toulouse

big rivers of ice, with little people.

Library of Congress

I also love the fact that most of the people seem to be dressed in their “Sunday best”,

Powerhouse Museum

almost like a stroll on a glacier is just like a stroll downtown…

National Library of New Zealand

only it’s colder and one must carry a stick.

Oregon State University Archives

View the full gallery here to leave your comments!

Flickr Commons uploads include many historical images–and historical images include many awesome hats–hats as costume, hats as uniform, hats as protective gear, and hats as fashion. Here are some of the finest examples.

This one at least looks lighweight–straw and flowers.

George Eastman House

The classic Australian hat–Aussie Olympic teams still wear this style in the opening ceremonies some years.

Australian War Memorial

A palmetto hat she made herself–probably a very practical solution to the need for cool headwear in Florida.

State Library and Archives of Florida

Evelyn Nesbit’s eyes, and the photo itself, all seem focused on that extravagant plume.

Library of Congress

The sideways cap–it isn’t just for 1980s rapper wannabes.

Library of Virginia

The pin on this 1930s headwrap commemorates the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

State Library of New South Wales

Mrs. Burleson’s huge hat marks her as a special leader of the suffrage parade. But the other women have some fine millinery too.

Library of Congress

The frayed edges of this hat match the frayed layers of Cody’s outfit.

George Eastman House

Feather plumes like these endangered several species of birds.

Library of Congress

Russell was an artist, but that’s no beret.

Smithsonian Institution

The exuberant hat matches Mrs. Stulle’s smile and attitude–she ran a matchmaking service for widows and widowers.

Library of Congress

Gardner’s hat marks him as a Nantucket eccentric, even while his suit and expression are quite sober.

Nantucket Historical Association

European immigrant women at Ellis Island sometimes brought with them the elaborate headwear of their home regions.

New York Public Library

Helene Dutrieu was the fourth woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license; she also raced cars and motorcycles. This makeshift helmet seems to have extra layers of felt for ear protection.

Library of Congress

A ballet dancer’s costume, heavily beaded and embroidered.

State Library of New South Wales

The clean lines of the sailor’s cap match the Portuguese actress’s trademark bangs and eyebrows.

Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Today, we generally only see boater hats at political conventions–but they were once ordinary daywear for men, especially on hot summer days in Tennesee.

Smithsonian Institution

One of the most popular and commented photos in the Commons features a serious boy wearing a serious hat.

Library of Congress

Flickr released a new feature this week called galleries.

Galleries - a new Flickr feature

The Flickr Blog explains,

For whatever you find interesting, fascinating, or mind-blowing on Flickr, galleries are a way to curate up to 18 public photos or videos of your fellow members into one place around a theme, an idea or just because.

Now any Flickr user can create an Across the Commons series, annotated, containing photos from the Commons centered around any theme that moves them! Here’s a sprinkling of Commons Galleries we’ve noticed:

Before Kodachrome, a gallery curated by Lú_, investigates the early colour photographic processes in the Commons collections on Flickr.

Before Kodachrome

Yours truly is fascinated by Yosemite National Park and tragedies. In this gallery, I put together Carleton E. Watkin’s historic photos with modern day images of the same scenes. Watkins lost most of his photographic legacy in the Great Fire of ‘06 in San Francisco… we’re fortunate that his work is available in The Commons.

Yosemite Then and Now

The Branch Office is a fun and eclectic mix of photos from both The Commons and from other Flickr users, curated by pennylrichardsca. Enjoy the beauty of light filtering down through the leaves.

The Branch Office

striatic re-creates a fun Across the Commons first posted to this blog. Just Plane Trouble is a fun and insightful look at aeronautic fails.

Just Plane Trouble

Delivering the Mail — the Commons way is a great curation from Brenda Anderson, in fact, the first Across the Commons that our group ran.

Delivering the Mail – the Commons way

What galleries will you create? Drop by our thread in the Flickr Commons group and show us your stuff! We’d love to feature your galleries on this blog.

When she was photographed here, Mrs. Field was using a wicker wheelchair, pushed by the main standing behind her, apparently to tour the Bronx Zoo. Was Mrs. Field a wheelchair user?

Library of Congress

The answer isn’t obvious, because the zoo (like many zoos and other parks today) had wheelchairs for loan or rent. Notice the same model lined up behind Mrs. Gibson in this photo.

Library of Congress

Was this a common choice for tourists a century ago? The Commons has some tantalizing evidence that it may have been. Meet Madame Gardriol:

Bibliotheque de Toulouse

Another matron on holiday — this time, at a spa town in the Pyrenees. Her chair model is different, but again there’s a man pushing her and an umbrella handy for shade. Two could be a coincidence … are there other telltale images in the Commons? Look at this one, from the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893:

Brooklyn Museum

Flickr user Rob Ketcherside added a note marking the two people on the lower right of the photo, just below the pillars — that’s a man pushing a woman in a wicker wheelchair.

Wicker was, indeed, a common material for wheelchairs in everyday use, not just by tourists. Wicker wheelchairs are sometimes sold today as antiques (not hard to find online), and well into the 1930s wicker was considered a stylish, comfortable design element.

Walking in heeled shoes, in a corset, in heavy skirts and layers, balancing an impressive hat, as women of the era did, was no easy trick; for some, it was simply impossible to sustain for long periods. If Mrs. Field, Mme. Gardriol, and the Exposition-goer wanted to see the sights and dress like their peers, and they could afford to hire a chair, wheels were one realistic option.

Who are the men behind the chairs? These models are built to be pushed by a second person (not self-propelled). Were the men hired with the chairs? Or were they family, friends, longtime employees?

Whether or not these women were using the chairs as a temporary convenience or an everyday necessity, the spaces they traveled might reasonably have accommodated such conveyances, especially if the zoo, spa, or fair provided the chairs in the first place. How well? Were the pathways were smooth, the entrances to indoor exhibits wide, and the inclines gentle? If so, maybe the history of wheelchair accessibility in public spaces extends further back than the familiar symbols and features of recent decades.

The Commons has serious purposes and plenty of important content, but the folks in the Flickr Commons group still love spotting those adorable, irresistible animals! Wouldn’t you love one of these on a cushion or your morning coffee mug?

Two camels and a donkey!

Brooklyn Museum

Upside-down sloth!

Field Museum Library

Monkey on a rhino!

George Eastman House

A koala … yawning!

National Media Museum

Pig!	National Media Museum

Penguins in love! (okay, maybe not really …)

State Library of New South Wales

And baby barn owls!

Oregon State University Archives

Thanks to Nina, Ryan, 73939133 and Penny for the cuteness!