18 Rare Vintage Photos of What Life Was Like in the 1950s
Updated: Nov. 27, 2022These photos, including some never-published shots taken for Look Magazine, transport you back in time. Was life easier, harder, or the same for families in the 1950s, compared to today?
New set of wheels
In Detroit, this family of three smiles in front of their home with their state-of-the-art 1951 Ford Custom Fordor Sedan. Check out these ads for vintage cars you’ll wish you could own today.
Even stars had to be good mothers
This photo, taken a year after I Love Lucy aired (the series ended in the fall of 1957), shows the enormously successful TV star Lucille Ball in a more domestic setting. Avidly covered by magazines and newspapers, Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide 45 times, more than any other celebrity.
Vintage city
A group of young girls entertains themselves playing on the streets of Harlem in New York City.
Protecting children
The year before this photo was taken, there was a polio epidemic in the United States with 58,000 cases identified in that year alone. In 1952 the polio vaccine was developed, and during its testing period, until it was licensed in 1955, women waited in line for hours to try to get the trial vaccine for their kids (as seen here). The word miracle is overused, but this vaccine and a later oral vaccine were just that, virtually eliminating the disease. In 2012, there were only 223 polio cases in the entire world.
Following the trends
Dance crazes were especially popular during the 1950s and 60s, with names like The Twist and The Mashed Potato. One of the earlier fads was The Bunny Hop, a conga-line formation which originated among students at San Francisco’s Balboa High School in 1952. Speaking of trends, find out what the most popular toy was the year you were born.
Making do with what you had
Today, in Park Forest, Illinois, you can find an Aqua Center with a 367,000-gallon pool with four slides. But back then, hot homeowners found relief on a much smaller scale.
Swimsuit competition
Although the modern bikini had been introduced eight years before this pic was taken at a beauty pageant in Park Forest, Illinois, it was still considered too racy for many American women. It took French bombshell Brigitte Bardot wearing a bikini in the 1957 movie And God Created Woman for the two-piece swimsuit to reach the mainstream. Many of the little girls are sporting outfits with modestly flouncy skirts.
Science show
Even a Nobel Prize-winning physicist needs to have a little fun sometimes! Here, Professor Felix Bloch, a Swedish-born physicist who spent much of his life teaching at Stanford University, blows up a balloon while his wife and four children watch. Some things never change—the kids cover their ears and brace themselves for the loud “pop!” In 1952, three years before this photo was taken, Bloch was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for developing a new method for measuring the magnetic field of atomic nuclei. But, as this photo makes clear, he never ceased to be a family man.
Political arm candy
These Ike Girls first made an appearance in 1952 as part of “Draft Ike,” the first successful grassroots effort in the 20th century to bring a private citizen, WWII hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the White House. (The ones shown here were drumming up the vote for Ike’s second term.) Today, these Ike umbrellas and garments are collectors’ items, but you can find several girls’ school sports teams with the name “Ike Girls.”
“Look, Mom!”
The joy of traveling is alive and well for this mother and her young daughter in 1957. The pair of passengers experiences the luxury of Greyhound’s dual-level Scenicruiser bus, which had debuted a few years before in 1954.
Going camping
American families past and present are lucky enough to be able to enjoy the splendor of the United States’ national parks. This family picked a prime spot to set up their tents in the midst of the Rocky Mountains in 1959.
The Forgotten Fifties
Many of these images are from the nostalgic Skira Rizzoli book, The Forgotten Fifties: America’s Decade from the Archives of LOOK Magazine. The Library of Congress owns the entire archives of Look, which was published from 1937-1971; at its peak, it had a circulation of 7.75 million. Next, check out these rarely seen photos you won’t find in history books.
