I walked a foot-beat here once in the late '70s. The cast of characters included One Armed Johnny and Bad Feet Sam. Fun times.

I’m very impressed by the level of detail in the embiggened slice that Dave has provided. Once I opened it, I embiggened even more and was further impressed by the facial detail in the old woman crossing the street (center) and the mother and daughter walking towards us (right). Then I noticed the bricks, the leaves, the grass ... amazing.

... the earthly smell of life. So that's what that was. I thought it was low tide.

One feature of note for me is that there are bars on all of the ground level windows. Something I guess I have allowed myself to not notice in my naive thinking that so far back times would have been more honest.

This building with all the horses started as the Patterson Mansion. It was designed by Stanford White, and had just been completed a couple of years before this photo. The Patterson family only occasionally stayed there and often lent it out. President Calvin Coolidge lived there during White House renovations; Charles Lindbergh used it after his transatlantic flight. It also spent ~60 years as the Washington Club, before being converted to apartments in the 2010s.

Seeing old photos here dating to 1905-1907, it is clear how very quickly motor cars overtook horse-drawn transport. Here there are no automobiles yet, so no gasoline fumes, just the earthy smell of life, especially in the intersection.

Click twice to embiggen.