Growing up in St. Louis MO. I remember the streetcars. Yes it's a day for memories, but some of these photos (not mine) are of days well before my life!)
SEPIA SATURDAY 401 : 13 January 2018
Balls Bridge, Dublin by Robert French : c. 1901-5
BRIDGES : BUSY SCENES : TRAMS : TRANSPORT : STREETS
Here's a video about St. Louis streetcars! From KETC, Living St. Louis Producer Jim Kirchherr collects stories and
old movies of the streetcars that were used in St. Louis during the
Great Depression. Passengers share their own memories of riding around
the city in streetcars for a mere seven cents.
I never saw those double decker busses that are in the video, while I lived there, probably after the time they were popular. My years riding the steetcars were 1950-1960.
Photo by Post Dispatch.
Missouri History Museum
We (Mom, sister and myself) would get on a streetcar near our first apartment in St,. Louis on a Saturday morning, then go downtown and spend the day shopping. What a grand thing department stores were in those days (the 50s). Each floor would have a separate department...and there were no escalators that I remember, just lovely elevators with someone driving them who wore white gloves.
The elevator rides may have been a result of my sister having sat down on her first escalator (maybe 2 or 3 years old) and catching her undies in the teeth at the bottom of the machine. She let out quite a howl!
Here we Texans were, transplanted to Missouri, so we went on a picnic by the banks of one of the rivers...probably the Mississippi. This was when my sister was about 4, and there I am behind my father when I may have been 8.
Today's Quote:
“Strong men — men who are truly role models — don't need to put down
women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others
up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.”
- Michelle Obama
I stumbled slightly at the top of an escalator when I was young once, and to this day I am very mindful of where my feet are and what I'm doing when I come to the end of one! :) Nice pix of various streetcars. And picnics like that must have been nice on hot days.
ReplyDeleteGreat street car photos. I also appreciate Michelle Obama's quotation.
ReplyDeleteThere is an old restored streetcar to ride in Minneapolis, and it goes through a wooded area like your first picture.
ReplyDeleteThe era of streetcars built American cities and kept people together in urban communities. When buses and cars took over, the new bigger roads/highways changed American society by introducing the isolation of suburban life. I often wonder what Asheville would be like if its streetcar lines had survived the Great Depression.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the department stores have changed tremendously over the years, sadly. Amazon can provide so much more than a brick and mortar could ever hold. However, there is no charm.
ReplyDeleteGreat streetcar photos. I braved my first escalator in a department store in Schenectady, N.Y. My grandmother went down ahead of me, but I balked. I spent quite a while watching those steps flow by before I plucked up the courage to step on, only to find my grandmother looking all over for me at the bottom :-) A fond memory evoked by your post!
ReplyDeleteThey Look Such Elegant Machines!And White -Gloved Attendants!
ReplyDeleteAround these same times we had "trams" in England.I dont remember them myself, although I do remember plenty of (by the time of my childhood) unused rails & tracks . Which , in retrospect,was a kind of poignant landscape.
A couple of years ago,I went to an Industrial Museum in Bradford.They had a couple of old trams on display.You could even 'climb aboard"!I was struck how cramped & height- restricted they were.Maybe this was the case with Streetcars too?