Amateur photographer and historian Joseph Owen Curtis was born in 1915 and lived in Southwest for most of his life. Curtis’ many images of streets, businesses, and buildings document the architecture and social life of Southwest, primarily before the urban renewal of the 1970s. Curtis' detailed captions identify most of the individuals and places in his photographs and illustrate the significance of the institutions and relationships built in Southwest D.C. Of particular importance in the collections are photographs of the Willow Tree Athletic Club and football team, Miner Teachers College students and activities, numerous Southwest buildings and neighborhood streets, World War II servicemen (both overseas and in D.C.), and the Randall playground and Randall Junior High School communities (in the 1930s and at reunions in the 1950s and 1980s). In 1988, Curtis rephotographed the former sites of some of his previous photographs of Southwest; those slides, the only color photographs in the collection, document the loss of Curtis' native landscape.