Yesterday’s Yellow Springs: A Mid-Twentieth Century Image Archive

In This Section

Yesterday's Yellow Springs - Full Project

Yesterday's Yellow Springs Full Project

Project Background

This project began by accident. Through reviewing materials at the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce office as part of my Oberlin College winter term internship, I discovered over fifty historic photos of the downtown area. From uncovering them to scanning them, I realized they needed to be researched further, and so the real project began. The goal was to provide a catalogue of photos for villagers to look through that was organized, clear, and informative.

Learning about town in the 50s and 60s meant realizing how different Yellow Springs was at this time. When these photos were taken, the hardware store was still a hardware store, Antioch was flourishing, and the railroad hadn’t yet been converted to a bike path.

Also during this time, the Gaunt Park pool was completed, WYSO had its start, the Glen Helen Association was founded, and the Riding Centre was established. It was an important few years for this town, and these photos can remind those who take the time to consider them of how much Yellow Springs has grown and has the capacity to grow. This immersion into the past may also compel you to research other events and places in Yellow Springs history. A few I found interesting were the history of Glen Helen, the DeNormandie building, Mary Gove Nichols, and Bryan High School.

The Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce has put a great deal of work into finding the correct information regarding years and locations of the photos and I sincerely hope that you enjoy looking through them to get a sense of what downtown Yellow Springs was like in the 1950s and 60s. Thank you to Scott Sanders at Antiochiana and the Yellow Springs News team for their help with this project.

How To Use This Archive

Recently uncovered photos and Kodachrome slides from the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce office are believed to have been taken in March 1955 or August 1960. Images with dates on the bottom border are from August 1960, and images with dates on the left side border are from March 1955 (most photos list August 1960 on one of the borders, but this is not always accurate). You will notice the biggest difference between these photos is that most of the 1955 photos have incandescent light poles visible in them, while the 1960 photos have updated mercury vapor light poles in them.

Several photo descriptions include addresses, which indicate where the photos would be located in the current day and may not match the actual addresses at the time they were taken. Current day photos were taken on January 21, 2026.