3-075-096 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Our Artist in America: a look round New York in the snow, (1890). '...From a Broadway car; Those overhead wires again; Ear laps; the Brakeman; that cruel umbrella; study in black and white; a telegraph post...We are told over and over again how well they...have adapted their street organisations to the strain and stress of their weather. They have done nothing of the kind...the city of New York makes no attempt to deal with the snow. The directors of the tramways keep their course clear by dint of unceasing attention...[but] the snow remains where it falls, laying with the accompanying frost stratum upon stratum of icy pavement upon the sidewalks, where it remains...The telegraph-post...strikes one as being more out of place [here] than anywhere else. It seems to link with its civilisation the primitive life of the backwoods. It is a mere scaffold-pole, sometimes not even stripped of its bark...Unfortunately, of late these constructions have been the cause of many fatal accidents in New York. The Sketch of a workman perched up aloft amid the surrounding wires represents a familiar fact in the Empire City, and, during wind and snowstorms, horses and drivers in the street often come to grief amid the electric telegraph debris'. Joseph Hatton. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.