Today's Hagley Vault post has got class, thanks to these five women. This photograph of teachers from the Lester Public School of Lester, Pennsylvania was taken on September 8, 1919 by Charles Yessel (1877-1953).
Yessel was the staff photographer for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's South Philadelphia Works, once located in Essington and Lester, Pennsylvania. The Works manufactured gas and steam engines, turbines and mechanical stokers for use in railway systems, fire service pumping stations, the shipping industry, and other large scale industrial purposes. The Lester Public School had been recently built at the time of this photograph (you can see photographs of its construction in 1919 right here) and once stood at the corner of Third and Powhattan Avenues. The school closed in 1965.
This image is part of Hagley Library’s collection of Westinghouse Electric Corporation Steam Division photographs (Accession 1969.170). A curated selection of items from this collection has been digitized; our Digital Archive offers over 1,000 photographs from this resource dating from 1898 to 1964. These photographs cover a variety of subjects including building construction, turbine manufacturing, research facilities, machinery, executives and employees, and visitors to the facility. To view more material from this collection online now, click here.