These were never that wide at the bottom. They were pretty straight up and down.
This pump only LOOKS bigger at the bottom in the photo. That is due to camera technology at the time. I took 5 years of photography back in the day. That is probably from a poor ’zoom’ lense back in the day. It would distort all of the objects at the edge of the frame. I almost guarantee this was cropped from a larger picture and the pump was at the bottom-right of the frame.
Or the picture was taken with an old 8x10 view camera (pictured below) or some other smaller camera with bellows, which you had to have the bellows parallel to the object or it would also distort the view.
Keep this in mind when looking at other old pics, if they are distorted, specifically near the edges.
I guarantee it wasn’t taken with an iPhone.
-Steve