The Streetcar Blues

Paying your fare and riding to your destination would seem simple to the New York City commuter in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century, but the machinations behind the conglomerate street railways of Manhattan were as snarled as the traffic. Reading a short 20 year history of NYC Railway Company and the Metropolitan (one of dozens of iterations) in Wikipedia will tax your brain and reveal two things of significance: (1) Our legacy of impenetrable, opaque corporate financial dealings (organizations, mergers, leases, collapses and reorganizations) has been a long, long time in the making in America, and (2) Corporate law was (and still is) a very good business with job security.

This blurry little snapshot from someone's photo album was taken between 1907 and 1911, or so the "facts" suggest, before electrification of streetcar lines pulled by horsepower which had begun as early as 1832 in the city. There are four horses in this picture, which means that a second car is abreast of this one and is hidden from view (there were only two horses per car). The streetcar companies were called railways – confusing to us since we think of steam and diesel locomotives – but rails made it much easier for horses to pull heavy loads and had the added benefit of iron wheels that were more durable than wagon wheels, provided a smoother ride and did not mire in mud in rainy weather. Of course there were steam locomotive railways, both street level and elevated, and subway systems contemporary with the horse drawn variety in NYC. This car's exterior is enameled sheet metal which replaced the much earlier painted wood siding.

Here is an engraving of an earlier version and company name of the Metropolitan streetcar.

Charlie And The Goats

Point-and-click cameras are the norm today, and they go a long way toward raising the success rate of the photographing-challenged among us, but cameras were not user-friendly and operators had it tough a century ago.

If those are the recently-disposed-of Christmas greens lying on the sidewalk, and if the Chaplinesque man is dad, and if the goat cart was a present for the kiddies, then mom hasn’t gotten the hang of the new camera – or she is still into the holiday nog! “Aw, Mom, we don’t even have faces in this picture!”

Based on my limited knowledge of goats (Indian cuisine mostly), they look pretty good.

One thing is for sure: that’s one uptown cart – and the reason for adding this blurry snapshot to the collection (but don’t stare too long, it will give you a headache)!

Direct To Your Door ...

This collection is replete with the horse-powered delivery vehicles that were as ubiquitous as internal combustion vehicles today; you had to be careful crossing the street but the "by product" made work for street cleaners and was more useful (though you imagine the atmosphere could be heady on a warm day since catalytic converters for horses never made it to market).

We think more often of residential milk and ice delivery by wagon, but fresh vegetable vendors were making their rounds in urban areas in season. Here is W. Cormly's butcher rig from the Pompton region of New Jersey in the 19th century (as early as 1870, or maybe later); it is nicely painted; the horses have a corded blanket-like drapery that I have never seen (I'm no expert on horse gear and have no idea what purpose it may have served beyond adornment – the pinstriping of the day?). This original print showed a partial view of a canopied buggy at the far left, but the condition of that portion was too damaged for any quality restoration.

Riding In Style

Goat carts are not as common today as they were in a more agrarian age, and even in urban communities at a time where many people kept carriage and buggy horses, chickens and perhaps even a cow on their property. A goat could be trained to pull a small cart with children as passengers, so it was the bicycle or go-cart of its time. Some were quite elaborate and expensive affairs, but most were more cheaply constructed and surely many were homemade projects.

The young boy in this image has a very nice cart; he is dressed in the Buster Brown style with some Little Lord Fauntleroy touches. As is not uncommon, it is the son who is pictured at the reigns while the daughter stands by (perhaps doing her best to look properly admiring while thinking, “I can drive that thing every bit as well as you.”)

Technical note: The image below compares the faded state of the collected print with the image restored to its original appearance. It is surprising how much tonal range still exists in a faint and yellowed original when scanned and edited in readily available image manipulating software. See Restoration of Old Photos.