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Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1908. "Military Street." Breathe deep its heady mix of cigar smoke, coal soot, gasoline fumes and fresh manure! View full size.
My great, great grandparents were married here around this same time. How amazing to look at this city through their eyes! I am completely addicted to this site.
The track that the streetcar is on was part of the "Rapid Electric Railway" electric interurban line to Mount Clemens and Detroit. The "Rapid" was operated as a division of the Detroit United Railway System which spanned much of the southeast and Central portions of Michigan, even reaching as far south as Toledo.
What's with the Caribou head on the Nat'l Express building? And what the heck are those things on its antler-tips?
The bottles on the antlers above the National Express Company are a nice touch. Was that a popular practice at one time? Kind of like tennis shoe pairs on powerlines are now?
Actually, the aroma of horse manure in not too great concentrations can be rather pleasant. And keep in mind that horses never do their business on the sidewalk, as dogs are wont to do. Finally, horse manure can be gathered up and scattered on one's garden with very positive effects.
I think this is the same spot. I'd miss the strings of lights overhead (to say nothing of the great old facades).
A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of. (See Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]).
Someone on Flickr snapped a picture of roughly the same view:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8981778@N06/1510859957
Note that most of the buildings on the left have gone (probably because of some urban renewal plan), but the ones on the right are still around and restored.
I cant quite make out what's on the antlers of the deer's head -- light bulbs?
[That's what it looks like. - Dave]
Looks like an Elks Lodge on the left, which pretty well completes the Shorpy requirements for an old-time street scene.
It also appears that the Elks have been decorating their mascot.
I'm trying to figure out how that trolley track switch works (left of center middle ground of the photo), as it doesn't appear to have movable points. Anybody have any ideas?
looking for a handout at the Elite Cafe. "Hey, you in the bowler. How 'bout a chicken sandwich?" Ha ha. Poor pup.
Does that elk have light bulbs on its antlers?
To think today you can be fined for your dog droppings. Horse poo must have been as common as dirt in the old days.
The National Express Company was another one of those freight handlers that were nationalized into the Railway Express Company during the First World War.
"It's All Right" certainly doesn't have the zing of "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke," but then they didn't have Rudyard Kipling writing their copy.
Of course, every street view must be captured in a postcard
The Central Drug Store here is the same one we see in this thread just a bit farther south from the bridge.
But the Benedict is not great, just "All Right."
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