Here’s the first of several carriage- or driving-related (or otherwise interesting) photos that I found in our Glimpses of the World book. The photo captions, naturally, describe the man-made or natural wonders shown but make no mention of any horse-drawn vehicles in the photos.
I’m sure we wouldn’t say anything about the automobiles that “interfere” with our modern photos of landscapes or buildings, either. I know I wouldn’t mention them and would usually rather they weren’t in my photos at all. Likewise, most of the photos in our old book don’t have any vehicles in them, but some of the streets were just too busy to leave the pedestrians, horses, and vehicles out of their portraits.
In front of the Paris Opera House, we can see a number of Broughams (serving as taxicabs, no doubt) and a three-abreast of gray horses hitched to a crowded Omnibus.
(To see a larger version of the photo, click on the photo once and then, when a new version comes up, click on it again.)
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This is the photo caption from the book:
“This is not merely one of the most magnificent structures of the French metropolis, but is the largest theatre in the world; not strictly so in regard to its seating capacity, which accommodates about 2,200 people, but in the area of three acres which it occupies in the very heart of the city. The first view of it as one approaches it along the boulevards can never be forgotten. Broad marble steps lead up to a facade adorned with groups of statuary representing Lyric Poetry, Idyllic Poetry, Music, Declamation, Song, and Dance. Above these are medallions of four great composers, and over these extends along the full width of the structure a loggia or gallery embellished with beautiful Corinthian monolithic columns and a marble parapet. Above the windows of this loggia, the eye beholds with pleasure medallion busts, in gilded bronze, of Mozart, Beethoven, Auber, Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Halevy, whose noble works are heard so frequently within the Temple of Music which they thus adorn. To right and left upon the roof colossal groups in gilded bronze stand radiantly forth against the sky, portraying the divinities of Poetry and Music with the muses in their train. While to complete the charm of this extraordinary building, there rises in the center a majestic dome above the crown of which we see, triumphant over all, the statue of Apollo holding aloft a golden lyre, which still reflects the splendor of the setting sun long after evening has begun to spread its shadows over the adjacent streets, which soon will burst forth from that temporary twilight into a blaze of artificial brilliancy almost as light as day, which makes the place of the Grand Opera seem like the diamond-clasp in that long belt of gaity, display, and fashion known as the Parisian boulevards.”
The Slower Road 