December 9, 2012
This rather large building was the Algonquin Hotel in Dayton, Ohio, c. 1904.
Parked in front of the hotel are two delivery vans and several bicycles. I can’t read the name on the first delivery van, but the other one is from Pearl Laundry (with a very fancy “L”). Two ladies and a young girl (trying to balance something on her head!) are crossing the street.
December 8, 2012
There’s a lot going on in this photo of Exchange Place (Providence, R.I.), c. 1910. There are pedestrians; cars, horse-drawn vehicles, and a streetcar traveling down both sides of the large square; cars, carriages, and delivery vehicles parked along the right-hand sidewalk; and a multitude of cars parked in the square itself. Then, in the foreground, are eight working vehicles and trailers of various sorts. It looks like these are being used to haul equipment and supplies for road work or construction, judging by the piles of rocks, etc.
December 7, 2012
Here, we’re on the Ohio River at Louisville, c. 1905. The river barge in this photo looks like it’s being unloaded, judging by the poultry wagon (far right) being driven down one of the ramps.
According to the caption, the large barrel-like objects (there are three of them on the dray hitched to a pair of horses) are hogsheads of tobacco.
And is it my imagination, or does it look like a calf is being loaded on the delivery van hitched to the single horse?
This photo doesn’t have any horses or carriages in it (or does it?*), but it’s interesting because it shows the rest of the Georgia Lee riverboat at the far left of the first photo.
*Is that a wagon, all packed up in a crate and being shipped somewhere, in the bow of the Georgia Lee?
November 29, 2012
Here’s a view of Eleventh Avenue in New York City, c. 1910. The street was dubbed “Death Avenue” around the turn of the nineteenth / twentieth centuries because of the large numbers of pedestrians killed by the freight trains (!) that ran, albeit slowly, on these street-level tracks. In an attempt to not frighten the horses, the coal-powered steam locomotives were disguised to look (somewhat) like streetcars. But I do wonder whether the horses were really fooled …
In the foreground, on the left, a delivery van waits by the curb, and a wagon loaded with barrels is driving right on the tracks, between the train’s flag-man on horseback and the train itself. To the wagon’s right (to its left as we look at the photo) is a Hansom Cab. You can see a number of other delivery and commercial vehicles, and a streetcar, next to the train.
According to the caption on this next photo — another view of the same street — it was supposedly taken about a year later. But I think it was actually taken on the same day (near the same time, even) as the photo above. The horse and delivery van by the curb are clearly the same in both photos.
The street-level tracks were replaced in the 1920s with an elevated track.
November 14, 2012
This street scene by the Syracuse, NY, train station (c. 1905) shows a train locomotive, a horseless brougham (with a set of pretty substantial-looking rear wheels) sitting next to the tracks, a number of baggage trolleys, a few (horsed) broughams awaiting passengers, and a “ghost” horse (that driver must’ve picked up his passengers and started moving out of the frame during the exposure).
The Slower Road 