There are plenty of places where offices were the norm some years ago. When I worked in Germany the standard was either single Offices or team offices With max 5 people. In the US IBM also had offices when I contracted there. Microsoft always talked about their offices as important. Developers sitting elbow to elbow in a room with dozens of people is a fairly recent development from what I have seen. The need for headsets to get some quiet also seems fairly new.

That's interesting, but I'm unsure how much we can generalize from some photos. For example, I wonder how much "photogenic bias" [0] and survivorship bias exist in such photographic evidence. How many photographers of the time would take a picture of a hallway of private offices? And what editor would keep such photographs for posterity?

[0] There's probably a better term for this...

You're probably looking for "selection bias" in some sense, where the photos exist but they aren't being looked for so they aren't found.

THere are a bunch of places where 2 to 3 pps are in the office. I never accepted a job that didn't involve me having an office like that.

Office pictures from the Great Depression are not very convincing ;-)