Sunday, January 22, 2012

Market Street, Newark, N.J. c. 1908

Streetcars, horse-drawn wagons, pedestrians, cobblestone streets and all those signs. Who could ask for anything more? I work in Newark and pass through Broad and Market streets five days a week, hence my fascination with the city's past.

Check out the sign for Proctor's "Newark's Theatre Beautiful" and then "Refined Vaudeville-Low Prices." Pillsbury's Flour is nice and visible, twice, on this busy street. Some of the signs on the left seem to float, indicating they were pasted on the photo: Reilly's and Van Horn's can be detected if you squint. Red Star Stamps might have been an early version of S&H Green Stamps, but I'm not sure.

Newark has a number of old buildings still standing, in truncated form, along Market Street. Orange, the destination on the streetcar,  is the name of a nearby suburb. Unlike New York City, Newark never consolidated with neighboring suburbs such as Orange, Belleville and Bloomfield. It's a fairly small "big city," with a population of about 277,000, according to the 2010 Census.


Miss Fannie Maurer of Gansford, Pa., received this postcard in May 1908:

I guess you are done housecleaning. I am just going to start tomorrow. How is your mother? You had better come along down when I come up. Carrie.

4 comments:

  1. Love this picture - I collect postcards from this era of Trenton, NJ where my husband's ancestors were from and post them on my RogersFamilyHistory blog. Having never been there it gives me such a feel for those times. His great-grandfather was a doctor and drove his horse & buggy all over the streets of Trenton. Thanks for sharing this.
    Teresa Wilson Rogers
    http://forgottenfacesandlongagoplaces.blogspot.com/
    http://rogersfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/

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  2. Beautiful card with both the old and the new types of transport. I can just hear the horses click- clack. It reminds that not so long ago there were still often horses through our streets. Today, only policemen ride them, and not so often.

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  3. You're right, this postcard has it all. I love that you can see the cobblestones and make out the advertisements too.

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  4. I fine example of the many exterior advertisements typical of this era. It's ironic that when cities advocate downtown restoration they overlook this ornamentation of the buildings. Still it is fun to see the faded remains of old billboard ads.

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