Running across Market Street in 1922, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

It's 1922 and you're running across Market Street at 4th in this imaginary journey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And before you get worried, relax, you're young, there isn't much traffic, and what traffic there is is moving very slowly by 21st-Century standards.


The view is looking west on Market at 4th Street, and as you can see, the photo is marked June 22nd, 1922. I really have no idea why you're running across the street, but looking at your apron, you're probably a vendor, and maybe you brought a carrot over to the horses. Or maybe you just ate at the Market Street Lunch Room.


By the way, in case you're wondering where I found this photo, it's at the Duke University site. They scan in photos like this so that people can study historic advertising, like the ads for Coca-Cola and Pillsbury.



Advertising is, and always has been big business, and whether the advertising agencies who placed these ads were in Minneapolis, Atlanta, or New York, they would need to see what the looked like, so a photographer would have been sent out to record it. In other words, this was just an ordinary, mundane photo taken for business purposes. To me, it's beautiful, not for the advertising, but for the feeling. It makes me wonder if people will look back on ordinary photos today in 100 years and marvel at them? Hard to imagine, but it will probably happen.


I have to admit that the most interesting thing to me in this photo is the vehicle at the far right. No doubt that at the time it was just an ordinary delivery vehicle that no one looked at twice, but if I saw it nowadays at a car show I would be dazzled. Looks like someone is taking a nap in this one!


I really can't get enough of looking at this view, and yes, that's city hall back there, which is still there. The street cars are electric, and from what I've read, you would just jump on them, and a conductor would be there to ask you for your nickel, or token. The traffic, of course, stays to the right, but if something gets in the way, like a horse cart, traffic just slows down and goes around it.


Thank you for visiting Philadelphia in 1922 with me!

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more