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Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Interactives Main Street 2020–2022
2020 – 2022 A dated visual record

Main Street was shut.
The money moved online.

While these blocks stayed masked and shuttered, nearly $800 billion in PPP loans moved through some 5,500 lenders — and one fintech portal promised the application in five minutes, for free.

How each image is dated
Shuttered, graffitied storefronts with a masked passerby, New York
Shuttered storefronts, New York. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress · 2020–21
The contrast

On the street: closed gates, empty blocks, masks. On the screen: a loan portal that set out two federal loans in six steps.

This gallery holds only images that can be dated to the pandemic window. The photographs are Library of Congress documentary work; the portals and the ad are web captures, dated below each image.

11 Street photographs 3 Loan portals 3 Marketing pages 100% Dated 2020–22
Provenance & method

How every image here is dated to 2020–2022

The Street (11). Photographs from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress — her COVID-era photographs of New York City. Each carries a 2021 LoC accession number. Eight of the eleven show a pandemic marker in frame: face masks in all eight, and a COVID-testing ad in one. The remaining three (“Emptied blocks, Lower Manhattan”, “Brooklyn Bridge, quiet water”, “Lower Manhattan, across the river”) are emptied-street and skyline frames from the same dated series: they are placed here for the vacancy they record, and carry no marker of their own.

The Portal & The Pitch (6). Web captures from 2020–2021: the loan applications and company sites via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (dates shown per image), the SBA disaster-loan and Restaurant Revitalization portals as they stood in the program window, and a Womply ad recorded in Meta's Ad Library as running in March 2021.

Images that were only about the period — later enforcement pages, present-day portraits — were deliberately excluded. Nothing here is a re-enactment or a stock stand-in.

Sources. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress · Internet Archive Wayback Machine · U.S. Small Business Administration · Meta Ad Library. Each item is identified by its collection, accession or capture date above; we keep copies of the underlying captures but do not link them image by image. The loan figures in the introduction come from two SBA releases: $792.6 billion is the approved total in the SBA PPP loan-level data (FOIA), 2024 release, and the lender count is the 5,467 in the SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Report, approvals through May 31, 2021.

More source documents

38 source documents on this program, in date order.

  1. undatedFAQ: Do PPP loans count as "outstanding debt" for purposes of Main Street? (2020-10-30)Source document
  2. undatedFederal Reserve Board updates frequently asked questions to clarify the Board and Department of Treasury’s expectations regarding lender underwriting for the…Source document
  3. undatedMain Street Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-28)Source document
  4. undatedMain Street Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-10-30)Source document
  5. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (August 24, 2020)Source document
  6. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (August 6, 2020)Source document
  7. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (July 31, 2020)Source document
  8. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (November 18, 2020)Source document
  9. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (October 30, 2020)Source document
  10. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (September 18, 2020)Source document
  11. undatedMain Street for Nonprofit Organizations Frequently Asked Questions (September 4, 2020)Source document
  12. undatedMain Street Lending Program For-Profit Businesses Frequently Asked Questions (August 24, 2020)Source document
  13. undatedMain Street Lending Program For-Profit Businesses Frequently Asked Questions (July 31, 2020)Source document
  14. undatedMain Street Lending Program For-Profit Businesses Frequently Asked Questions (October 30, 2020)Source document
  15. undatedMain Street Lending Program For-Profit Businesses Frequently Asked Questions (September 18, 2020)Source document
  16. undatedMain Street Lending Program Frequently Asked Questions (July 15, 2020)Source document
  17. undatedMain Street Lending Program Frequently Asked Questions (June 20, 2020)Source document
  18. undatedMain Street Lending Program Frequently Asked Questions (June 26, 2020)Source document
  19. undatedMain Street Lending Program Frequently Asked Questions (May 27, 2020)Source document
  20. undatedMain Street Lending Program Post-Termination Frequently Asked Questions (April 9, 2021)Source document
  21. undatedMain Street Lending Program Post-Termination Frequently Asked Questions (February 1, 2021)Source document
  22. undatedMain Street Lending Program Post-Termination Frequently Asked Questions (January 7, 2022)Source document
  23. undatedMain Street Lending Program Post-Termination Frequently Asked Questions (January 8, 2021)Source document
  24. undatedMain Street Lending Program Post-Termination Frequently Asked Questions (July 29, 2021)Source document
  25. undatedMain Street New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-28)Source document
  26. undatedMain Street New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-10-30)Source document
  27. undatedMain Street Priority Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-28)Source document
  28. undatedMain Street Priority Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-10-30)Source document
  29. undatedNonprofit Organization Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-06-15)Source document
  30. undatedNonprofit Organization Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-17)Source document
  31. undatedNonprofit Organization Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-28)Source document
  32. undatedNonprofit Organization Expanded Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-10-30)Source document
  33. undatedNonprofit Organization New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-06-15)Source document
  34. undatedNonprofit Organization New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-17)Source document
  35. undatedNonprofit Organization New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-07-28)Source document
  36. undatedNonprofit Organization New Loan Facility Term Sheet (2020-10-30)Source document
  37. undatedTerm Sheet: Main Street Expanded Loan Facility (2020-06-08)Source document
  38. undatedTerm Sheet: Main Street Priority Loan Facility (2020-06-08)Source document
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