I got totally distracted this morning digging into these amazing color Library of Congress photos that Freddie Norton pinned. There is one from Brockton, Mass that caught my eye–it’s the newspaper headlines posted in the window of the local newspaper office in 1940. But it wasn’t the headlines as much as the Japanese flag-like advertisement that drew me in. Freddie’s done a great job pinning these photos, as he linked to the original photo on the Library of Congress website (you can see the details by clicking “copyright and photo info” when you’re on the details view of the photo in Historypin, which links back to the original photo location). This allowed me to download the super-hi-res version of the photo to capture the zoom seen above, and realize it’s an ad for Anthony Uto’s 4 chair barber shop, and see the other sign in the shadow just around the corner. Some very smart advertising, particularly given the time.

Oh, and notice the headline for the New England earthquake!

There are some great comments and further information about this photo, including Grandfather Uto, over on Shorpy, as well as on Flickr both here and here.