Moody Street, Waltham, Massachusetts, circa 1940

About this postcard

A street-level view down Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts, where multi-story brick commercial blocks carry storefronts at ground level. Signs for F. W. Woolworth Co., Kane, Waldo, Majestic Furs, and a jewelry shop run along the block, with period automobiles parked at both curbs and pedestrians moving along the sidewalks. Moody Street was Waltham's downtown shopping district, the retail center for a city whose watch and textile works employed much of the surrounding population. The Woolworth sign marks a five-and-ten chain store of the kind that anchored main streets across the country in the mid-twentieth century, sitting alongside locally named shops in the same blocks.