Oct 27, 2021 0
The Bettmann Archive

To get into the Bettmann Archive, about 90 minutes north of Pittsburgh, you need more than a library card. You need the proper credentials to get past the armed guards at the door. You need to be gloved and swaddled in several layers to deal with the cold. And you need to be OK with claustrophobic conditions, since the trip requires being shuttled hundreds of feet underground.
Seen as the father of image resource archives, Otto Bettmann immigrated to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1935 with “a few personal effects and two steamer trunks bursting with photographs, line drawings, engravings, and art reproductions.”
(via Atlas Obscura)