Exactly when I first stumbled upon Shorpy.com I do not recall. It may have been due to StumbleUpon, actually. Once realizing the treasure I’d found, it also became apparent the vast hours of time that would be needed to properly peruse these thousands of extremely high resolution images documenting urban American life over the last 150 years or so.

Some of my favorites are of the bustling street scenes prior to the invasion of the automobile. As rapid urbanization was pushing the very beginning of the era of the skyscraper, new also was the evolving invention of photography. Yet it was during this experimental phase that pursuit of the sharpest, lushest images seemed to peak. Shorpy is dominated by photos shot on 8″x10″ plate glass negatives. They can literally be enlarged to the size of your average interior wall before they start to blur. Taken by numerous photographers, the majority of the images on the site were shot by the Detroit Publishing Company.

When scrutinizing these street scenes, a few things jump out right away. Of course there are no traffic signals, there’s clearly no need for them. Streetcars, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages are everywhere. Where there is high traffic, those on foot still enjoy sidewalks upwards of forty feet wide along store fronts nestled into human-scaled buildings rarely more than 5 stories high. But it’s also telling that there are no crosswalks for pedestrians. And why would there be? During this era – as it had been for thousands of years – you could safely cross wherever your heart desired and not have to watch for giant metal machines racing toward you. What’s more, the street here is not purely the thoroughfare – it is the essential common gathering place for demonstrations, for buying and selling food, for children to play in, for celebration, for lingering and people watching.

Yet just a few years later all of this would change. If only there’d been a way to show the citizens of a century ago how completely mutilated the life of our streets would eventually become. Though it’s not like people didn’t put up a valiant fight against the infernal combustion engine. The very first fatalities caused by automobiles were protested in the streets as the tragedies they were. Mayors issued proclamations for public mourning. Contrast this to today, where Americans tolerate over 40,000 deaths per year from motor vehicles as an acceptable loss to be grieved in private.

Enjoy the small collection of images below as a reminder of what we used to have, and be sure to view them at full resolution. The amount of historical detail you’ll find is fairly astonishing. When you’ve got some hours to kill, dive in to the full archive at Shorpy.com. Here’s hoping someday we restore our city streets to the enriching, convivial places they used to be, before they were rendered hostile by the ‘convenience’ and ‘progress’ of the automobile.

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Click each image to view full resolution. Click the link below any image to view it’s source.

Randolph street, Chicago 1900

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Nassau street, New York City 1905

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Campus Martius, Detroit 1890

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Richmond, Virginia 1908

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Buffalo, New York c. 1900

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Empire State Express, Syracuse 1905

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Dock Street, Philadelphia 1908

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Mott street, New York City 1905

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Canal Street, New Orleans 1910

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Broadway, New York City 1902

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Little Italy 1900

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Market Street, Philadelphia 1905

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Broad street, New York City 1905

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Savannah, Georgia 1905

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Detroit, 1907

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