Seen at /r/HistoryPorn. Of note are the many factories, including Uneeda Biscuit.
Category Archives: History
Corner Store – Boston’s oldest surviving brick building.
The Old Corner Bookstore.
Some have billed this as the first brick building in Boston, but that fact is in dispute. What is not in dispute is that this is a wonderful relic from years past.
And looking as it does today:
Google Maps search done by /u/MyApplePie
A stereogram of the Old Corner Bookstore taken in the 19th century
“Threatened with demolition in 1960, the building was “rescued” through a purchase by Historic Boston, Inc. for the sum of $100,000.Historic Boston is a not-for-profit preservation and real estate organization that rehabilitates historic and culturally significant properties in Boston’s neighborhoods so they are a usable part of the city’s present and future. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is Boston Landmark under the auspices of the Boston Landmarks Commission.” – Wikipedia
The Old Wolf has spoken.
A Pinup makes a caboose a home
March 1943. “Conductor G. Reynolds, checking his waybills in a caboose of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad between Argentine and Emporia, Kansas.” Photo by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.
Found at Shorpy
New York: May 18, 1940
An eeriliy deserted 6th Avenue, looking south from 40th street. The man’s headline reads ‘Nazi Army Now 75 Miles From Paris.’ The lack of traffic and people, combined with the breakfast special sign, leads one to believe this may have been taken in the early morning.
The same scene today:
The times, they have done changed.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
51st and Lex: NYC, 1955.
Seen at Shorpy.
This is the New York I remember, the one I grew up in. Not too far from my home in that year, either. Notice the street light: no yellow. I remember sitting in my windowsill in 1955 or 1956, on nights when for some odd reason I wasn’t sleepiing, watching the staggered lights turn green or red all the way up Lexington Avenue (we were on 85th) – here’s my view, taken around the same era:
The window to the right was the one I sat in, and I was able to see a couple of miles up the road.
I would pay dearly for a time machine and be able to go back to the City in those days. In many ways it was a lot more interesting than it is today.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The 1933 Texaco Doodlebug
Just a little interesting history; one of only 11 made.
Famous enough that replicas were made of it:
More information and a lot more photos can be seen at Just a Car Guy and Hemmings Daily.
I used to be an avid collector of those die-cast models, particularly the Matchbox series by Lesney. I would have loved one of these in my collection.
NYC Snowstorm, 1947
Photo by Al Fenn.
Playgrounds
“A Safe Place to Play,” says the caption. That’s what the playgrounds I remember used to look like.
Awesome rope swing
Don’t forget the merry-go-round, that could fling you off with great force.
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Look at this beautiful old slide from the NYU playground project.
And, of course, the swings.
Wow. We never had anything like this. And still, somehow, we survived. There was the occasional bump and bruise. Someone would show up at school with a broken arm, and everyone would ooh and aah over the cast, as happened to my own son after he fell off a jungle gym. It happens. We didn’t even think of calling a lawyer.
Even as late as the 1980’s, playgrounds could be awesome:
Sadly, even looking at pictures like this is enough to give tort attorneys an orgasm thinking about all the billable hours they could earn, which is why modern playgrounds look like this:
Safe and boring.
Thanks, legal profession.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
1890: Telefontornet
This telephone tower in Stockholm in 1890 shows how the city was covered in thousands of phone lines. A bit more information is available at Colossal.
Manhattan looked similar in 1887, but notice how tidy the Swedish tower is by comparison.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
What ever happened to the Skyhopper? It was actually called the SoloTrek.
Edit 1/22/2016: The thing I was looking for was not called the Skyhopper, but rather the SoloTrek. My memory was the problem. Apparently the company that was trying to develop it abandoned the project. I am surprised I was not able to find an image of it with multiple searches until today.
As a result, the entire article below is now moot, but I’m leaving it up as a monument to my faulty memory.
The Internet remembers everything. Everything. Even things that people desperately want it to forget. as witnessed in the Streisand Effect.
So if I go hunting for something I remember seeing years ago, I expect it to be there, in some way, shape, or form… even if only as a relic, an artifact.
And when I can’t find it, I find it… disturbing, to say the least.
The dream of the one-man helicopter has never been fully realized, although a lot of people have spent a lot of money on the idea. I remember years ago one outfit was working on one. There were pictures, videos of the thing being tested in tethered mode, solicitations for investment, the works – all very professional.
It may have failed. It may have been a ponzi scheme. Anything could have happened. But there should be some remnant of its existence on the net, but… nothing.
I’ve searched for skyhopper, one-man helicopters, personal helicopters, two-fan hovercraft, and fifty other permutations.
Blank.
I remember it used two of these things:
… attached to a sort of one-man tripod. Now I can’t draw worth hqiz, but the basic idea was this:
Edit: I couldn’t remember the name, but my memory of the basic structure was fairly accurate.
The pilot would stand on the two platforms, hold on to the controllers, and off he’d go.
I’m almost 100% certain the thing was called the “skyhopper,” but that term has now been co-opted by something from the Star Wars universe. It’s as if any reference to this invention has been carefully and deliberately scrubbed from the internet.
That makes no sense at all… even failed inventions leave traces. And I know that i’m not experiencing a false memory – I was intrigued by the pictures and the concept when I first saw it, and followed it closely until it became clear that no further progress was being made.
Now, I put no stock in conspiracy theories[1], but the absence of any reference to this thing goes against everything I have come to understand about the persistence of information on the internet. It’s just strange.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] What’s really happening, of course, is that the Air Force saw this idea, classified it, killed the inventor, scrubbed all references from the internet, and is now developing the idea secretly at Area 51, aided by the Erich von Däniken foundation.
Playing in the World Game 