New York City, Transportation</head>

In 1898 walking and street cars were the most popular modes of transportation in the city. Ferries were used to get from New Jersey, Staten Island and Brooklyn to Manhattan.

The rich had their own carrages and the poor could not afford the expensive fares of hired cabs. However, an article in The Outlook in 1898 makes the folowing interesting comment about the hired cabs"

"Their fares are mainly persons invited to the ostentatious funerals so dear to our Irish and Italian fellow-citizens of the humbler sort; persons going to occasional social affairs; and to strangers picked up at the steamer-landings and railroad stations"

In 1898 on the evelated cars;

"The fare is always five cents, and for this, on the island, you may ride on the elevated roads from One Hundred and Seventieth Street and Third Avenue clear around the city to Eight Avenue and One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street--- nearly twenty miles"


"Crosstown Rapid Transit, 1905, N.Y. City"

Postcard collection of Maggie Land Blanck

Munsey magazine, 1902, collection of Maggie Land Blanck

"THE EVOLUTION OF MANHATTAN-- MODERN IMPROVEMENTS HAVE THEIR PENALTIES, AS THE SLIPPERY ASHALT SHOWS ON A SLEETY DAY IN WINTER; BUT THIS PROLEM WILL BE SOLVED WHEN THE AUTOMOBILE SUPERSEDES THE HORSE FOR CITY TRACTION."

Yes, but.....



Postcard collection of Maggie Land Blanck
Traffic on West Side Highway, Looking North From 46th Street, New York City


You Would Think We Would Learn


New York City, State, and Nation by Sol Holt, a 1955 Junior High School civics book.
The caption on this page reads " Although the slow horse-drawn wagons have almost disappeared from our streets, the many thousands of automobiles, trucks and buses still cause many traffic jams and delays, as shown above. Our tunnels and bridges carry so many motor vehicles into New York every day that the city has a serious traffic problem"


Outlook magazine, 1898, collection of Maggie Land Blanck
Ferryboats in the Ice


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