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Washington, D.C., circa 1925. "Street scene, Massachusetts Avenue and 2nd Street N.W." A nice sort of ambient view of nothing in particular. If you listen very carefully you can hear a dog barking in the distance. View full size.
If I recall correctly, pulling the handle on one of those boxes wound an escapement that powered a mechanism that used telegraph/telephone wires to report to the to trigger a clanky bell at central dispatch, and that was relayed to the stations in that district. The message was a series of clanks, ie: 2 - 5 - 1 which identified the box that was pulled.
Growing up in Wellesley, Mass. in the 50s, the same method was still used, except central dispatch sounded a matrix of very loud horns in the code of the box.
My mom was a bored housewife at the time, and had gotten a copy of the codes (maybe they were in the front of the phone book) and would pile us into the car and drive out to see the "action".
By the time I was 16 yrs old a friend of mine and I were riding around in a 60 Rambler Wagon with a half dozen antennas and radios (and an illegal red light we could slap on the roof) a driving all over the Boston area to see the "action".
For what it's worth, several of those call boxes are still around and have now been made into street art.
The D.C. system activated both a lamp and a gong at the station house to show where the alarm was. Around the turn of the century, there were 30 circuits.
Currently a big office building on this corner. Home to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs.
What does it say on the unusual lamp almost at the center of the picture? Is that a police call box or something else?
[It says "Fire Alarm Box." There's another one here. - Dave]
In a college filmmaking class 35 years ago the instructor told us that adding a low volume dog-baking audio track to a "establishing shot" (like this picture) was often done to add some interest to a scene containing no action. I think they still do it.
[Only on Elm Street! - Dave]
The car repair business looks as if it's been abandoned for some time, and the building may be in the process of being demolished. Note what looks like demolition debris between it and the "Cars Washed and Polished" garage.
If this had been shot in the Southwest, you'd expect to see a tumbleweed rolling down the street.
The door on the car wash says keep out, and my Essex really needs a bath.
How long has it been since you've seen those words at what used to be called a "service station"?
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