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Virginia Avenue strollers (and rollers) in Atlantic City, New Jersey, circa 1905. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
A prohibition against skateboards would cause a problem, because the device under the street car to collect the electricity from the surface contact boxes was called a "skate".
Not quite. Here is the sign, biggacated and computerally enhanced:
[Nice try! However ... - tterrace]
Here is another Shorpy Picture of essentially the same scene circa 1905, a year or so before this picture. https://www.shorpy.com/node/8532?size=_original.
In the 1905 picture, there is no Gator Farm advertisement on the fence and the cafe in the Hotel Jackson was the Jackson Grille and Restaurant as opposed to the Ladies and Gentlemen's Buffet and Cafe run by "Jno Cruse" a year later.
As to jimboylan's question about the address of the Grand Atlantic Hotel: a circa 1900 map of Atlantic City shows it to have been on Virginia Ave., just beyond the Avon Inn toward Pacific Ave. In this picture, if you look past the Avon sign on the right side of the street, you can see the towers of the Grand Hotel shown in https://www.shorpy.com/node/12772?size=_original.
that woman has to push her own carriage up that hill!
Here's the proper link to another Shorpy photo showing no trolley wires, 2 tracks, and surface electrical contact boxes for the far track only. I can't find the address of the Grand Atlantic Hotel or its Annex. One of the Central Passenger Railway's routes was half of a "Loop Car" line, from Boardwalk & Virginia Ave. to Boardwalk & South Carolina Ave. via Atlantic Ave. They connected to, and later may have owned, Venice Park Rwy. lines to the interior of the City.
Can anyone make out the writing on the upper right on the trolley? I think it says "Smoking Not Allowed".
That electric streetcar is no trolley. Look behind it, there are oblong boxes for a Pullen system of surface electrical contacts. It has not been installed on the other track, almost buried in the mud. By next year, 1906, both tracks will have trolley wire. See:
https://www.shorpy.com/node/8532?size=_original
Because if I time travelled 107 years in the future from my peaceful walk with my friends and baby up lovely Virginia Ave in Atlantic City to THIS spot, I would be beyond horrified (and would immediately demand-if not beg- to be taken back to where I came from vs stay in the tacky, gaudy 21st century version of my sweet little street!)
There are no overhead trolley wires as in another 1905 Atlantic City Shorpy post at https://www.shorpy.com/node/8139?size=_original
There's no subterranean center slot and the rails can't be "hot" (the obvious rail brushes wouldn't be able to keep them clean enough for good contact anyway, even if they were extended), so that leaves:
1) Horse powered (there appears to be a hitch receiver, and the area between the tracks seems to have a different texture than the rest to the street, possibly from more hard working horse traffic).
2) Battery/electric motor driven
3) Internal combustion engine driven
The internets are full of old stock certificates for The Central Passenger Railway Company, but I couldn't find any relevant info on their rolling stock, so I gave up, unsatiated.
powers that beautiful trolley?
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