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OLD AMERICA...THE WORLD THEN....

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#1 ·
EARLY AMERICAN PHOTOS

You don't have to be a history buff to enjoy these remarkable photos from another time.

This is an incredible collection of tinted photochromes from the end of the 19th century and dawn of the 20th, hiding away in the Beinecke rare books and manuscript library. Published by the Detroit Photographic (which no longer exists), the firm's photographers traveled the country snapping the sights of North America to be printed on postcards and sold to the public.


Gold's Curio Store, Santa Fe, New Mexico, circa 1897.
This was the first Indian curio business established in Santa Fe. The ramshackle old adobe building with wood carrying burros in front of and or around the corner on Burro Alley made this innovative curio shop on San Francisco street a favorite subject for photographers of the late 19th century. Jake Gold, a brilliant salesman, cast himself as a man worthy of a souvenir portrait card as a moustached, frilly leather jacketed rugged frontiersman complete with a muzzle-loaded pistol stuck in his braided sash belt. He was equally colorful in discourse, "The tourists want to hear tales, and I am here to administer the same."
-

Pulpit Terraces from Above, Yellowstone National Park circa 1898. I found very little information on the current state of these terraces today and could only find old photographs of them. They may have changed names to the Travertine terraces.

Glacier Point and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1898

The Lobby, Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone Park, ca 1897, still open.

Navaho Woman Weaving a Blanket, 1902

Interior of Corridors, Mission San Juan Capistrano, CA, 1906. Now this 200 year-old monument has been restored (especially after the fatal 1812 earthquake) and you can still visit.

Old Caretaker at Mission San Juan Capistrano, 1897 (see caption above).

California grapefruit, 1902

The Arcade, Cleveland, 1901, still open for business.

Glen Afton Spring, near Pen Mar Park, 1903. No current information found, appears to be lost to the modern world.
 
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#2 ·

Betsy Ross House, Philadelphia, 1901. You can still visit.

The Glory of Azaleas, Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, South Carolina, 1901. You can still visit these gardens at Magnolia Plantation & Gardens, Charleston's most visited plantation.

Temple Square, Salt Lake, 1898. Built in 1847, is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and located in the center of Salt Lake City, Utah. Attracting 3 million to 5 million visitors a year, Temple Square is the most popular tourist attraction in Utah, bringing in more visitors than the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park, with its museums, geneology libraries, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Salt Air Pavilion, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1901. Burned down in 1925. Today, Salt Air III is still a popular concert venue, but it's a shadow of what it once was.

Box Canyon, Ouray, Colorado, 1904. You can still visit this 285 foot waterfall, with quartzite walls that extend almost one hundred feet past the falls.

Sutro Baths, San Francisco, 1900. Built in 1896, it was located near the Cliff House, Seal Rock, and Sutro Heights Park.
The facility burned down in June 1966 and is now in ruins.

Carmel Bay near Monterey, California, 1900, with its much photographed cypress tree.

South View, Hotel del Coronado, south of San Diego, on the California coast, 1899. Still open for business (Prominently shown in the movie Some Like it Hot.)

Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton, south of Oakland, California, 1902. The world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory.
Mount Hamilton site remains a viable location for a major working observatory. The little town of atop the mountain has its own police and a post office, and until recently a one-room schoolhouse. By 2013, with continuing budget and staff cuts there remain only about nineteen residents and it is common for the observers to work from remote observing stations rather than make the drive, partly as a result of the business office raising the cost to stay in the dorms, the swimming pool has been removed. In 2013, one of Lick Observatory's key funding sources was scheduled for elimination in 2018, which many worried would result in the closing of the entire observatory.
In November 2014, the University of California announced its intention to continue support of Lick Observatory.
-Wikipedia / Lick website.

The Cliff House, San Francisco, California. 1899. Boasting the best views in San Francisco, this seven story Victorian mansion built in 1896 by Adolph Sutro, survived the 1906 earthquake but was destroyed by fire 1907, eleven years after being built. Four different variations of the Cliff House have now stood on the cliffs overlooking Seal Rocks, and it has held restaurants, dance halls, gift shops and vista points. It is now a restaurant

Seal Rocks, San Francisco, California, 1901

The Boardwalk, Atlantic City, 1900

Home of Rip Van Winkle in Sleepy Hollow, Catskill Mountains, 1902. People used to stop at the Rip Van Winkle house on the long trip to the Catskill Mountain House. The Mountain House Road and the Rip Van Winkle house began a steady demise in 1892 when the Otis Company built an inclined railway up the mountainside to the Catskill Mountain House. It burned to the ground around 1918.

A Monday washing, New York City, 1900. (Note the many corsets, but no bras--they weren't invented yet.)
 
#3 ·

Glen Afton Spring, near Pen Mar Park, 1903. No current information found, appears to be lost to the modern world.

The Old South Church, Boston, 1900.
The second oldest church building in Boston, built in 1729. During the siege of Boston, the British gutted it, burned the pews, and used the building as a riding school. Old South survived fires in 1810 and 1872, and was destined for demolition in 1875 when concerned citizens stepped in, formed an Old South Association, and raised the money needed to save the building. Today, the association continues to operate Old South as a museum. It is the site of lectures, meetings, concerts, plays, and church services. The steeple now contains an 876-pound bell cast by Paul Revere in 1801. Hooked up to the 1766 tower clock, it rings out the time on the hour, reminding Bostonians of an earlier era.
- Walking Boston

St.. Charles Street, New Orleans, 1900

Old French Courtyard, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1903. (Still there and prettier.)

Circular Bridge, Mt. Lowe Railway 1897-1924. It was "the grandest scenic trip on earth"; an enchanting and world-famous mountain railway journey to a vast resort where champagne and caviar was served along with panoramic views over southern California as far as the Pacific Ocean. this railway hasn't existed since 1936 when it was abandoned following a series of natural disasters and bad business decisions. The pride of California's once most scenic attraction has been all but lost and wiped off the map. Hikers who only have access to the former railway resort by foot, will find nothing but ruins, a few steps and other clues, basic stone foundations of the old luxury hotels and rusted metal remains from the railway. More pictures can be found on the Mount Lowe Preservation Society.

Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon, Arizona, c. 1902. You can still find the same trail.

The Giant's Club and Kettle, Green River, Utah, 1898

Crevasse formation in Illecillewaet Glacier, Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, circa 1902

Burro pack train ready for the mines, Colorado, 1904

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, ruins, 1904. Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The structure built by the Ancestral Puebloans is located in Mesa Verde National Park, their
 
#6 ·
Rooter, Rothamme!.... Thank you both for these great old photos. I am am a a child of the 60's. I wish I had pictures of some of the small towns I lived in as a child. They would look almost as quaint as some of these......
 
#7 · (Edited)
I ran across these on the 'net some time back.

Transport Vehicle History Building House

I lived in the house on the left (Winslow, AZ), but 90 some years after this photo was taken. Other than the dirt street, this corner looks very much the same today (the dirt starts a few blocks over).

Transport House Building Architecture Residential area

Holbrook, AZ, Bucket of Blood Street. Down the Santa Fe line, east of Winslow.

My Sparkletts warehouse would be just off frame at the left. A century later this street looked very much the same. This would be taken from the platform of the Santa Fe station which was undergoing restoration toward the end of my AZ days. The Bucket of Blood saloon is in the buildings left of the tent.

Photograph Snapshot History Team Vehicle

The Bucket of Blood, so named for the aftermath of gunfights there.

Across the tracks was the Blevins house, site of an infamous shootout between Commodore Perry Owens and the Blevins 'gang' in 1881.

The details of the story vary with the telling but, basically put, one of the Blevins' was drunkenly bad- mouthing Cmdr. Owens around town and at the Bucket, loudly proclaiming Owens would not see the next light. Owens was the Sheriff of Holbrook and had fairly well had enough of Blevins and the crew he hung out with, so he sauntered over to the Blevins house to serve a horse theivin' warrant on one Andy Cooper.

From there details vary widely, but within five minutes Cooper was fatally wounded, John Blevins shot through the shoulder, Moss Roberts shot through from shoulder to lung while bailing out of a window, and 15 year old Sam Blevins was shot dead while in the arms of his own mother. Owens then calmly walked back to his horse at the livery stable.

Cooper died the next day, Roberts days later. The part about 15 year old Sam made for some really bad press. The Blevins house is now the Holbrook Senior Citizens Center.

House Building Home History Tree

Blevins House.

Stock photography

Commodore Perry (his actual name) Owens
 
#8 ·
EARLY AMERICAN PHOTOS
A great collection of history ....wonderful stuff.....

You don't have to be a history buff to enjoy these remarkable photos from another time.

This is an incredible collection of tinted photochromes from the end of the 19th century and dawn of the 20th, hiding away in the Beinecke rare books and manuscript library. Published by the Detroit Photographic (which no longer exists), the firm's photographers traveled the country snapping the sights of North America to be printed on postcards and sold to the public.


Gold's Curio Store, Santa Fe, New Mexico, circa 1897.
This was the first Indian curio business established in Santa Fe. The ramshackle old adobe building with wood carrying burros in front of and or around the corner on Burro Alley made this innovative curio shop on San Francisco street a favorite subject for photographers of the late 19th century. Jake Gold, a brilliant salesman, cast himself as a man worthy of a souvenir portrait card as a moustached, frilly leather jacketed rugged frontiersman complete with a muzzle-loaded pistol stuck in his braided sash belt. He was equally colorful in discourse, "The tourists want to hear tales, and I am here to administer the same."
-

Pulpit Terraces from Above, Yellowstone National Park circa 1898. I found very little information on the current state of these terraces today and could only find old photographs of them. They may have changed names to the Travertine terraces.

Glacier Point and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1898

The Lobby, Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone Park, ca 1897, still open.

Navaho Woman Weaving a Blanket, 1902

Interior of Corridors, Mission San Juan Capistrano, CA, 1906. Now this 200 year-old monument has been restored (especially after the fatal 1812 earthquake) and you can still visit.

Old Caretaker at Mission San Juan Capistrano, 1897 (see caption above).

California grapefruit, 1902

The Arcade, Cleveland, 1901, still open for business.

Glen Afton Spring, near Pen Mar Park, 1903. No current information found, appears to be lost to the modern world.
A
 
#10 ·
Rothammer, If that's your house to the left, then that could have been you, "Standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona" a few years later!;)
Indeed. During the time I lived there the 'Standing on the Corner Park' was dedicated a couple of blocks to the southeast. It's a mural of a girl (my lord) in a flatbed ford reflected in a store window, with an eagle perched in the smaller window above. A bronze statue of a guitarist leaning on a Rt. 66 signed lamp post stands in the brick courtyard for tourists to take photos of themselves 'standing on a corner'.

Not long afterward, the building behind the mural burned and this fence was around it for a few years.
Building Property Brick Architecture Facade


Since then, they've spruced things up a bit, it seems.
Vehicle Transport Town Car Mode of transport


Same corner, 'back in the day.'
Poster Vehicle Building
 

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#17 ·
I passed by Winslow a few times, too, but I am not a girl, and my truck wasn't a Ford of any kind.... it was a Freightliner FL120, but I very well could have been listening to The Eagles ;)
 
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#12 · (Edited)
Blink and you'll miss it.

La Posada is worth visiting. It was the last of the great Santa Fe RR 'Harvey House' resorts and underwent a full restoration when I was living in WLO. The Turquoise Room restaurant there is excellent (and high $).
Home Residential area House Paper product Suburb

Restaurant Tavern Room Event Business

The Turquoise Room, La Posada

The picarros down the street at a place called Bojo's, however, were also grubbin' and were all-U-can-eat on Wednesdays. To visit family for the holidays I'd ride the Amtrak from La Posada to L.A. Union Station, leaving on a Wednesday night with a heap of picarros and smuggled Moosehead beer in my bag.

It was the absolute opposite of airport hassle. I'd buy a ticket in advance, walk a few blocks from the house to La Posada, stroll through the unmanned station, stand trackside (often as the only person there), the train pulls up, I'm on, we're off.
L.A. Union was far busier and larger, but still a smooth operation.
Landmark Building Mission Painting Architecture

Holy places Building Architecture Basilica Synagogue

You've seen this before. It's a popular 'location' for film, TV, and ad shoots.
 
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