Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
1899. "Dumping snow into the river after a blizzard, New York." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
George Bellows's "Snow Dumpers."
Clearing fresh snow was not exactly an urgent endeavor in the era before automobiles. Horses didn't have trouble with it until it got many inches deep. In fact, snow was sometimes laboriously moved onto the decking of covered bridges to lubricate sleighs and sledges.
My wife and I spent 9 hours in Penn Station last Monday PM, about 12 blocks from the Flatiron Building, waiting for a train south in the middle of this year's NYC blizzard. Fortunately we had a seat in the Amtrak waiting area, but it was really chaos there. The local airports are still digging out as I write this.
Polluting the river with all that dirty snow? My, my -- what will Pete Seeger say?
The winter of 1898-99 set many of the all time low temperature records. Some of the ones that were not broken in the severe winter of 1904-05 still stand today. This is especially true in the South. Little Rock's coldest temperature was -12. That happened in February 1899 and still stands today.
Horatio, I think we can get a clean set of prints off this print!
They had no front-end loaders, no dump trucks, no modern snowplows, but they got rid of the snow from the Blizzard of 1888. But then there was no Internet for them to broadcast their whining worldwide.
The Mayor of New York City needs this service.
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5