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Before horseless carriages

By adamg on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 11:04am
Horse-powered streetcars in old Boston

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.

Neighborhoods: 
Boston
Topics: 
History


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Comments

By John Costello on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 11:06am.

These buildings were replaced but some of the supermarket there towards Geneva Avenue is part of the old car barn that replaced these, as is the Star on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge.

By anon on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 11:28am.

Wow. If those trolleys didn't say Dorchester I would have said it almost looks like the entrance into what is now the Sam Adams Brewery complex from the end of Porter Street on the right in JP.

By anon on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 12:10pm.

The world must have been so much quieter back then

By John Costello on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 3:54pm.

I'll take today.

By SamWack on Wed, 05/11/2022 - 8:06am.

It's just that you're used to it, as you would have been then. You get used to the smell of horseshit, you get used to the smell of exhaust, but horseshit fumes don't kill you.

It's true that cars have cleaned up a lot, and that wasn't really an option with the former mode of transportation. I would't want to try to put a catalytic converter on a horse.

By Waquiot on Wed, 05/11/2022 - 10:51am.

You do not get used to that smell.

By SamWack on Wed, 05/11/2022 - 8:30am.

This is one of the things I love most about Venice. It's a city without cars. It can be noisy in places, but it's human noise, human voices. Turn a corner into a narrow calle, and suddenly it's still, quiet. You can hear footsteps a block away.

Of course in Venice there are no horses, either. Or bicycles, scooters, or mopeds. There are motorboats, but mostly only on the Grand Canal and a few of the other bigger canals. Parts of the city seem empty, but they're not; they're just without the motorized busyness to which we've become so accustomed.

By Ward8Mahatma on Tue, 05/10/2022 - 2:06pm.

…you enlarge the photo further you can just make out Dorchester Avenue on the front of the trolley at the left. I’ve seen other photos of these car barns on various sites that deal with the history of public transportation

By anon on Wed, 05/11/2022 - 8:35am.

???

By adamg on Wed, 05/11/2022 - 10:37am.