[PRCo] New York video clips

[Fred Schneider]

While looking at the film strips, there are also a lot of nice items on Gotham because it was the biggest city in the United States....

Broadway at Union Square in 1896.   This was during the brief period when all the electric railways on Manhattan Island (except for some that crossed bridges and terminated at the end of the bridges) were under the leasehold of the Metropolitan Street Railway.   The Met finished acquiring everything by 1895 and the financial panic of 1907 caused it to unravel.  By January 1908 Third Avenue had broken away.  Second Avenue became independent again in 1910.   Eventually the remnant became New York Railways.   The white dash cars are symbolic of the Metropolitan.    Notice also the lack of trolley poles for, like Washington DC and London, England, all lines on Manhattan Island were powered from a conduit.   On the very earliest photographs it is difficult to tell cable cars from conduit operation.   New York also had a lot of battery cars on lines that were so marginal that they were the preferred alternative to horse cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWV2GQL6xfo&feature=related

Broadway electric cars at Herald Square in 1896

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYjOqch-WO4&feature=related

Somewhere in Lower Manhattan in 1901

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0pvWvLJPCE&feature=related

Lower Broadway in 1902, two years before the first subway ... look at the headway between the streetcars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJu46ry0-b0&feature=related

And here is the first subway that replaced it.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjKL8_er34s&NR=1

War Time New York ... just a family film but a few of the Third Avenue Railway "Huffliners" do sneak in while we look at Times Square.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rf-FKkFktU&feature=related

Titled Driving Around New York City - 1928, it is a mix of several Hollywood silent comedy films.   There are some New York street scenes with New York Railways and Third Avenue Railways cars and an old New York horse car dashing through the streets but also some Pacific Electric cars in Los Angeles.   Enjoy the chase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0&feature=related

Brooklyn trolleys in 1938.   The double end Peter Witts that start out the show were the most numerous cars in later years ... I think 535 of them.   The last were use about 1954.   The single Clark PCC appears at minute 2:25 followed by one shot of a St. Louis PCC and then back to the ubiquitous double end Witts.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gmxm_xboqk&feature=related

Several of the Brooklyn trolley lines and and elevated lines focused on Coney Island.   I remember trying to get off a subway train there on a Sunday afternoon when everyone was trying to get back on.   It was almost impossible to get off.   My friend with me remarked, "You have a tripod with you.   Use it, damn it."   

Coney Island was where New Yorkers went to enjoy the sun, the sand, the beach and the amusements.   Much of that is now past tense.   Let's start with Miss Knapp's Select School for girls on an outing in 1905 ... see what your grandmother or great grandmother did on a summer day.  Dispel some illusions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH7ON4JiD-I&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEaZqu_xxOI&feature=related