Depositors at the Closed American Union Bank, New York City

New York City, early 1930s. Men and women crowd the corner of West 37th Street outside the American Union Bank, beneath its sign for safe deposit vaults. The National Archives record describes them simply as groups of depositors in front of the closed bank; the state took the bank over in August 1931. Bank failures were how the crash reached ordinary savers, and this crowd waiting at a failed bank shows that moment more directly than any count of failed banks could.