Archival 1906 film--fascinating

Wow, now I understand why all the traffic laws came into place. I seen so many tickets waiting to happen. Seems those days were erratic with all kinds of traffic.

I didn't see one man who wasn't in a hat and suit. Even the kids were in suits.

The rolling does stop until the end.


That was cool!

I've seen this before, thanks for posting it. I'm hugely interested in mass transit history and I like to see how people lived a long time ago. It's such a neat capture of life from a century ago.

That was supremely cool- did you notice- not one overweight person could be seen. Tells you something about today's society, huh?

I thought it was amusing that some people, and a collection of boys, noticed the camera and were obviously hamming it up some.

I'd like to see a side-by-side update, with the old footage on one side and new footage of the same street, shot at the same speed. That would be really cool.

Reminds me of a short documentary I saw on NYC about a week or so ago. It was shot in the early 1920s, and had no sound and it was so cool to see the horse drawn carriages outnumber the cars (which were all identical to each other. How did people know which car was theirs???). The skyline looked so different, the streets looked so different. It was hard to believe that was New York then.

But the thing that struck me (aside from all the hats) was that in one scene, a ferry is docking and letting people off to go into Manhattan. And there was one woman. This entire crush of people and only a single woman getting off the ferry. Weird. I love old footage like this.

Joe270 said:

I'd like to see a side-by-side update, with the old footage on one side and new footage of the same street, shot at the same speed. That would be really cool.

Click to expand...

I found this footage on the same site. It's supposed to be the same street, Market Street, but filmed after the 1906 earthquake.

While its quality is not nearly as good as the first, it does offer an interesting contrast.