This is the best film I've seen about Old New York City. It has lots of street cars, El scenes, antique autos and horse-draw wagons. The film has scene of the Els and street cars on the Brooklyn Bridge. Enjoy!
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
We tend to think of what we see in that video as old and antique, but when the film was made, everything was modern and up to date! The buildings, trolleys, els, cars and ferries that stitched together the city to make it efficient were all the latest developments, compared to life there 100 years before in 1810.
I could not help but notice how clean the street and sidewalks were, being fee of litter and toss-away trash, aside from the expected horse "emissions" which motor driven automobiles and trucks were eventually eliminating.
A fascinating visit to life a century ago in "Greater New York," as it was briefly known after the consolidation of five boroughs in 1898.
S. Islander
The mens hat manufactures must have had a booming & profitable business.
Amazingly clear picture. Nice film of how life was in a simpler time and no one one texting. Thanks for posting.
The streets did appear cleaner except for horse droppings everywhere. Notice that the people and kids acted as if there was nothing in the street. That had to lead a certain air to the period. Like the Tip-Top bread truck at 3:09. I remember that bread in its red, white and blue wrapper with the stars. I don't recall when they stopped producing; I guess sometime before 1960.
Good quality images. Good find. Thanks
I also noticed that the streets were relatively clean. I counted 10 motor vehicles but I may have missed some. I didn't try to count motor vehicles from the shots taken from the top of buildings. They were too small to see if they were autos/trucks or horse drawn.
There was one shot where a chauffeur driven car was filmed from the back of another vehicle (street car). The interesting part of this scene is that the driver is located on the right side of the car which is just the opposite of today. I expect that traffic laws had not been standardized at this time. I have read that wealthy people with cars did not drive themselves so a chauffeur driven car would have been normal.
Speaking of traffic laws, nearly everyone is "jay" walking. Maybe horses had enough sense not to run over people?
I have always wondered if people wore brightly colored clothes when I look at these black and white films. Is that man's suit blue or the woman's dress red?
It is interesting to see that women wore dresses that were closed at the neck and that skirts went to the ankles. It must have been hot in the summer.
There are many interesting things to see if you study this film. This is the world that my grand parents lived in and that my parents were born into. My grand parents and parents both saw a man land on the moon. The 20th Century was one of immense change. In fact more change probably happened in the first half of the 20th Century than in the entire history of man kind up to that time. Thank you for posting. NH Joe
That is a neat video, with sound added.
Everyone back then took care to be well-dressed. That is a very nice attribute and speaks of basic human dignity IMO.
and in relatively good shape.
Thank you for posting this, Very interesting. I never knew that NYC had cable cars.
Great video!..........Hard to believe Josh Cowen and Lionel had already been in business for 10 years. It is incredible he was head of Lionel until the late 50s.
I have seen pictures from this time period where they literally piled horse poop several feet high in
any empty lot they could find
Wow, my grandfather was born in 1895, Avalino Italy. He came through Ellis Island and settled in the South Bronx in 1910. At the time of this filming he worked as a taylor in lower Manhattan every day. He lived to see the space shuttle launch. In 1935 my mother was born in the same Bronx tenement and in 1972 she gave birth to me in that very same tenamanet. My granparents bought groceries from horse drawn carts, my mother took wood bodied street cars to college, and I grew up being able to read the graphitti on the sides of the IRT trains that gave voice to an otherwise poor, forgotten borough including the telling about how my grandfather was shot to death in... you guessed it that very same Bronx tenement.
Larry 3-rail, those were not cable cars. NYC didn't have overhead wires for trolleys. A device went down through the slit in that middle rail and contacted the "hot" wire below it. They were called conduit contacts. They used that system through most of Manhattan, if not all. I remember them from when I was a kid. In summer, they did have open cars.
Very nice peak at over 100 years ago. The air quality looked like Beijing did 15 years ago. You can barely see a mile. Coal was commonly used for heating. From that stand point, much better today.
RJR posted:Larry 3-rail, those were not cable cars. NYC didn't have overhead wires for trolleys. A device went down through the slit in that middle rail and contacted the "hot" wire below it. They were called conduit contacts. They used that system through most of Manhattan, if not all. I remember them from when I was a kid. In summer, they did have open cars.
There was a cable car on Broadway, and the Cable Building on Broadway at Houston street still survives at 611 Broadway The cables were spooled in this building.
http://nyc-architecture.com/GV/GV015CableBuilding.htm
It was not very successful it had issues around Union Square where it would make a corner and speed up if the gripman wasn't skilled.
The cars you see here however, had a bus-bar for power in a pocket under the street. A street car without overhead wires.
Cool video like said before everyone was well dress, in shape, neat old buildings. Now if it was just in color. Thanks for sharing. Nick T.
BMT-Express posted:RJR posted:Larry 3-rail, those were not cable cars. NYC didn't have overhead wires for trolleys. A device went down through the slit in that middle rail and contacted the "hot" wire below it. They were called conduit contacts. They used that system through most of Manhattan, if not all. I remember them from when I was a kid. In summer, they did have open cars.
There was a cable car on Broadway, and the Cable Building on Broadway at Houston street still survives at 611 Broadway The cables were spooled in this building.
http://nyc-architecture.com/GV/GV015CableBuilding.htm
It was not very successful it had issues around Union Square where it would make a corner and speed up if the gripman wasn't skilled.
The cars you see here however, had a bus-bar for power in a pocket under the street. A street car without overhead wires.
Perfect for 3-rail trolley modellers 
Nice video. Saw the Woolworth bldg which was the tallest bldg at that time, and the flat iron bldg and and a couple of others.
Just to put some perspective on it, this is the New York that was Titanic's destination less than a year later.
palallin posted:Just to put some perspective on it, this is the New York that was Titanic's destination less than a year later.
1911 was the year Southern #4501 was built, still around and running.
It's a great motion picture and kudos to the effort made to slow it down to remove the sped up movement that is typical of motion pictures of that era. There are a few other things worth noting. It is obvious the photographer had money (a camera like that wasn't cheap) and it is also obvious the pictures, for the most part, were taken in the better part of town - that E.M.F for example (the car with the black chauffeur) was not a cheap machine and anyone who could afford to have one chauffeur driven was a person of means. This does not diminish the images nor the quality but one should not extrapolate the overall condition of the city of New York from the presented views.
After the Blizzard of 1888, Manhattan essentially outlawed overhead wires, leading to the conduit streetcar system. You will note regular streetcars crossing the Brooklyn Bridge; they terminated at the Manhattan base of the bridge and headed back to Brooklyn, where overhead wires were still okay...
Note also the invention of photobombing at the 2:15 mark. 
And, yes, we 3-rail trolley modelers do point to NYC (and DC and London) as prototypes.
Mitch
Attachments
Very nice old NYC video showing trains and life in NYC about 110 years ago.
It gave me the idea to look for others videos on YouTube. There are numerous videos of NYC in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and some show trains there in that era, which is a time many of us like to model. Arnold
Arnold D. Cribari posted:Very nice old NYC video showing trains and life in NYC about 110 years ago.
It gave me the idea to look for others videos on YouTube. There are numerous videos of NYC in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and some show trains there in that era, which is a time many of us like to model. Arnold
Regarding NYC of the early 1900's era, I enjoy the story about the expression, "23 Skidoo," inspired by the Flatiron Building's downdraft and leering men, at 23rd, in NYC.
FrankM
In 1888 Brooklyn was still a politically separate city. Fourth largest in the US I believe.
This link talks about some short segments of wire the existed in Manhattan until much later--primarily in Washington Heights where the Bronx trolleys terminated.
After the merger of Brooklyn, Queens and etc into NYC people started calling it Manhattan. Of course folks in the other boroughs still talk of going into "the city".
