?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(BUSINESS.) Pair of barbershop interior views from Louisiana. Pair of mounted photographs, 4 x 6 3/4 and 5 x 6 3/4 inches; each cropped to the photograph, moderate foxing and wear, pencil note on verso of earlier photo. [Alexandria, LA, circa 1914 and 1922?]
Two evocative images of early 20th-century barber shops staffed by Black barbers. What seems to be the earlier of the two images shows 4 barbers standing at their chairs, and an assistant (bearing a whisk broom). In the background can be seen a sign for Rapides Bank and the store of Jonas Rosenthal, placing the scene in Alexandria, LA. The later image shows 3 barbers at their chairs, with one of the chairs holding a young White boy as a customer. The window sign reads "George's Barber Shop." The barber in the foreground of this photograph is almost certainly the same man at the rear chair in the earlier image.
George's Barber Shop at 1210 2nd Street was in operation from at least 1922 to 1941. It was managed by George W. Moore (circa 1883-1942), a Black man who operated a "white shop" according to the Alexandria Town Talk of 10 August 1933. City directories show that prior to launching George's, Moore was a barber at the Rapides Hotel from at least 1912 to 1914; perhaps the earlier image was taken at the hotel.
