Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Richmond streetcar images on E. Broad Street, 1940.



I got the following two black and white photographs on Ebay this week.
I paid $3.00 and that included postage - a pretty good deal.

Image #1 - Streetcar on the 100 Block of E. Broad Street -
most likely Sept. 1940 [which is the date written on the back of image #2
which appear to be taken at the same time].
Click on the image for a larger view.

I used a 1940 Richmond directory to identify the businesses and the block.


Here's the view of that block I copied today from Google Maps.



Image #2 - Here's an image of a Richmond streetcar on the the 200 block of E. Broad.

One the back of the photograph someone wrote the date Sept. 1, 1940.

Click on the image for a larger view.


- Ray Bonis

1 comment:

HEK said...

The saddest aspect to these streetcar images, especially ones taken around this portion of downtown, is that you can squint and the image almost resembles today. There's some taken around Monroe Park at Laurel and Franklin, others on Hull, that are tantalizing in their proximity to a contemporary vista. Of all the botched and bollixed policies that have afflicted Richmond in the past century, the enthusiastic demolition of our streetcar system is, in my view, a civic atrocity. The other big one was digging up the Great Turning Basin just to provide parking for the James Center, and not trying to include it as an amenity, closely followed by the Downtown Expressway taking out the remaining Tidewater Connector Locks. I'll shut up now.