Thursday, June 4
Shadow

Tag: ships

Jun262013 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Vintage Photo Wednesday, Vol. 35: New York Horsecar Scene, 1910s-1920s

Vintage Photo Wednesday, Vol. 35: New York Horsecar Scene, 1910s-1920s

Vintage Photo Wednesday
I'll admit that this one has me a bit puzzled. What I can gather is that this is a shot of a horsecar in front of a building owned by the Hartford and New York Transportation Company. The company operated steamboats, barges, skiffs, tugboats, and other water craft and carried passengers between New York and Connecticut -- making frequent stops along the Connecticut River. In 1906 the company was taken over by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. All this is to say that I can't really nail down a date for this very nice photo. Click for the full-size version. The main clue for dating offered here is the horsecar in the foreground of the photo. Horsecars -- which differed slightly from horse-drawn trolleys -- were pretty much phased out of New York City by 1917 or so, w
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Jun272012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Vintage Photo Wednesday, Vol. 1 — Photochrom Prints, 1890s-1900s

Vintage Photo Wednesday, Vol. 1 — Photochrom Prints, 1890s-1900s

Featured Posts, Vintage Photo Wednesday
This is the first of what I hope will be a long-running feature on the site. Each Wednesday I'll post a handful of vintage photographs that strike my fancy. Some weeks there will be a theme, others not so much. If you have any subjects you'd like me to look for, or have photos you'd like to share, let me know! This week's collection is drawn from the Photochrom Print Collection on the Library of Congress website. From the site: The Photochrom Print Collection has almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based phot
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Aug192008 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
View-Master’s 1952 New York City – 2 of 4

View-Master’s 1952 New York City – 2 of 4

Ephemera, History
Our journey through Ye Olde New Yorke continues - from the air!  This image, quite obviously taken from a shiny prop plane, is of the departure of the famed cruise ship RMS Queen Elizabeth.  The really cool thing about this photo is the scale.  You can get a good sense of just how huge this ship was when compared to not only the other boats around it, but even the buildings on the shoreline.  Incidentally, the ship held the record as the largest passenger liner ever built for 56 years. Launched in 1938, the Queen Elizabeth was originally designed for use as a cruise liner but owing to World War II, she was instead fitted as a troop transport.  She avoided destruction at the hands of the Luftwaffe by bypassing Southampton on her maiden voyage and instead sailing directly to New York.
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