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Hardware Store, 316-318 Bowery, Manhattan

Hardware Store, 316-318 Bowery, Manhattan

Berenice Abbott
American, 1898–1991
January 26, 1938
A gelatin silver print showing a Bowery hardware shop window crammed with tools and household goods, made by Abbott to document and dignify the everyday visual life of 1930s New York.
What strikes you is the packed, almost obsessive arrangement—rows of saws, hammers, pots, birdcages, and hand tools punctuated by handwritten sale signs, whose repeating shapes and metallic glints turn the storefront into a complex, collage-like surface.
Taken for Abbott’s Changing New York project, the photograph reframes ordinary commercial display as a record of urban modernity and texture, helping shift documentary photography toward close observation of vernacular design and social detail.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
7 9/16 × 9 9/16" (19.3 × 24.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase
Accession
14.1971
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
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