Saturday Night on Main Street: Iowa Falls, Iowa, 1939
All week, the farm came first. But on Saturday night, everybody came to town.
Arthur Rothstein photographed Iowa Falls’ main street on a Saturday night in September 1939, when a full main street was still the center of the social world. Farm families drove in for supplies and for a picture show — and for the simple reason that everyone else would be there.
It was the week’s one standing appointment: part errand run, part reunion. In the fall of 1939, before the war years changed everything, this was still how a small Iowa town kept itself stitched together — one Saturday night at a time.
Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USF34-028042-D
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