City - New York - Laying the track 1891
by Mike Savad
Title
City - New York - Laying the track 1891
Artist
Mike Savad
Medium
Photograph - Colorized Photo
Description
Colorized photo from 1891
Original Title: Construction of cable road
Location: 14 Union Square W (on Broadway ave) NY
Transportation has changed over the years, in NY anyway, they started with a horse drawn street car. This was quite a technological feat, because before it would have pull it over cobble stone and it was slow and cumbersome, not to mention messy. But on a track, it was able to pull it much easier, even when they made it larger than a normal coach.
As things advanced, they turned to using streetcars. A streetcar is a box that holds people, and a cable in the street, pulls them along. The streetcar has a sort of arm that grabs onto the cable and it propels it.
But in order to install these, they had to dig a deep trench, build up walls, work around the mess of utilities, then add supports. The cables would be added and the tracks. Somewhere down the line there would be a big station that would control all the cables. All of this was installed in 1891 or so.
But these cars had drawbacks, they couldn't slow down on a tight curve. They could detach from the a cable and stop, but it was messy around curves. Because of this, they started to fall out of fashion by 1905. The horse version was removed in 1917. After that they all became electric.
If you look at the left, there is a building that has no wall on it, this site will later become the Decker building, which was built in 1892. The building in the center is the McIntyre building, which still stands today.
Union square today, has fewer trees then it shows in this image.
Uploaded
January 25th, 2019
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