St Louis, Missouri

Hawthorne Boulevard in St. Louis is full of beautiful, well-preserved houses. I don't know if there are any little boys riding ponies down the street anymore, but it looks little changed since 1906 when this card was sent.

Here's the same place now:

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Vibrant Downtown - Louisville, Kentucky

I had to post this card in response to a comment last week that downtown Louisville has always been a dead zone.  Well, certainly not in the 1940s.

The card is from about 1942, based on one of the movies being shown at the theater on the right. The Wife Takes a Flyer was released in 1942, and starred Franchot Tone.  The other movie showing in the same theater may have been This Way Please, starring Betty Grable.  It was released in 1937, and may have been the lesser attraction of a double feature. It looks like there was another theater right next to this one, and then there's the Rialto Theater down the street. The Rialto was built in 1921, with a white marble staircase and Italian Renaissance facade. It was torn down in 1969. The Theater on the right is probably the Kentucky Theater, which is still standing, with the turret from the Palace Theater farther down on the right. There were a number of other theaters within the surrounding blocks. There was obviously lots of other activity downtown too.

Streetcar Sunday - Winnipeg, Manitoba

In 1891, Winnipeg became the third Canadian city to introduce electric streetcars. All was well for a number of decades, but dissatisfaction brewed after the end of World War II. In the early 1950s, the city hired an engineering consultant to look at the various options for streetcars and to explore whether the service could be expected to pay for itself and what entity should control it. As in many North American cities, the Winnipeg streetcars had been operated by the power company, in this case the Winnipeg Electric Company.

The consultant recommended that the government take over operation of the system, which it did.  Unfortunately, people complained more about the service under government operation than they did before. At the same time, people were extolling the virtues of buses over streetcars. So many other cities were changing over to buses. Not surprisingly, Winnipeg's streetcar system was replaced by buses in 1955.

The change to buses seems very odd to many of us today, but at the time it was considered the more modern and appealing alternative. People thought the streetcars were old and clunky and the buses were newer and more comfortable, which is approximately the reverse of public perception today. Buses had greater flexibility and could pull up to the curb, which also provided greater customer safety when boarding or disembarking.  Although measures have been taken to make streetcar boarding much safer today, the appeal is still largely personal and aesthetic. Appeal is not inconsequential either; if transit is expected to draw people out of their automobiles, it has to be appealing.

More recently, the City of Winnipeg has looked at introducing an aerial tram system that would operate above the streets.

Speaking of appeal - the front of the card is fairly simple and straightforward, the back is very ornate.