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New York, 1900. "Broadway looking north from Dey Street." Rising at left, the Western Union Telegraph Building. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size.
That's Astor House up past St. Paul's. After it opened in 1836, it became New York's first great hotel, for many years the (unofficial?) headquarters of the Whig Party, and the favorite place of Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, who told the NY Times he "would stay at no other hotel." Thurlow Weed supposedly lived there for 30 years. Photographer Mathew Brady lived there, and Thomas Edison stayed there when visiting from Menlo Park. William James was born there in 1842.
http://www.tribecatrib.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/standaloneslid...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Astor-loc.jpg/...
For me the most interesting thing about this picture is the interval between the streetcars, which is close to NOTHING.
OK, maybe there's heavy traffic, and a bunch of them got jammed up together ... but looking off to the north it appears that there's just a steady stream of streetcars.
Imagine how this would change city life if we tried this today, with trolleys and buses.
According to one source, it wasn’t until about 1909 that electric trolleys were pressed into service in New York. Prior to that there were ‘cable cars,’ as evidenced in the post. Looking carefully one can see the cable stretched out between the rails of each line.
[The electrification of Manhattan's streetcar lines began in the 1890s. That's not a cable between the rails -- it's a slot over the electrical conduit under the street. - Dave]
New York City has changed little in the last 123 years, huh?
A remarkable lack of women out and about in 1900.
At center left is St. Paul's Chapel. Built in 1766 in the Georgian style, it is the oldest existing church building in New York City.
Here is the view at street level today.
A relatively rare glimpse of cable cars in NYC -- the Metropolitan Street Railway
came late and didn't last long -- at least if the date is correct: unlike most areas, Manhattan went from cable cars to conduit-powered streetcars, so it's hard to tell by the trackwork alone. But the cars seem a match.
[The streetcars in our photo look a lot more like the electric streetcars seen here. - Dave]
Could be: the changeover date was May 25, 1901, so the premise rests entirely on exactly what the date is...I'll trade my comment for a "circa". - N
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