AA-2026-B97C71
On the image
After the service let out at this small brick Gothic-revival church — the pointed arch windows being the congregation's one concession to grandeur — the women gathered along the side wall in the instinctive way that church socials always organised themselves: the men drifted toward the cars, the women stayed and talked, and everyone understood this arrangement without anyone having arranged it. A chartered bus sits on the grass to the right, which means this was no ordinary Sunday; somebody organised a group outing, the kind of trip that in the 1950s required a church committee, a sign-up sheet, and at least one person who had been to the destination before and felt qualified to explain it. The women are dressed as women dressed for church then — hats, good dresses, nothing that would suggest they had not made an effort — because turning up to God's house in anything less would have been a social statement nobody wanted to make. The men standing near the bus have the look of men who have been told where they are going and are fine with that. The whole scene has the cheerful, slightly mandatory quality of organised fellowship, which the 1950s perfected.
Visually related — by likeness
Sunday Gathering Outside Brick Gothic-Revival Church, Rural Eastern USA, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-B97C71. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/sunday-gathering-outside-brick-gothic-revival-church-rural-eastern-usa-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026B97C71,
title = {Sunday Gathering Outside Brick Gothic-Revival Church, Rural Eastern USA, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-B97C71},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/sunday-gathering-outside-brick-gothic-revival-church-rural-eastern-usa-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Sunday Gathering Outside Brick Gothic-Revival Church, Rural Eastern USA, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-B97C71 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/sunday-gathering-outside-brick-gothic-revival-church-rural-eastern-usa-1950s ER -
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