Here's Photographer Jack Reilly Prancing About the 74-story-tall Bank, 1929

Captured here: Here's photographer Jack Reilly prancing about the 74-story-tall Bank of Manhattan while it was under construction in 1929. Made in 1929, it is the kind of image that turns a date in a history book into something you can actually see.

The 1920s roared with new money and new habits. Radio broadcasting began, cars became affordable for working families, jazz filled dance halls, and hemlines and haircuts shortened in ways that scandalized the older generation. News photography boomed alongside the tabloid press.

What makes everyday photographs like this one compelling is the details at the edges: the clothes, the signs, the tools, the postures. They preserve texture that history books flatten out.