Hole in the Clouds

Short-Handled Shovels

Aug 9, 2011

In 1910, most of the excavation work for the new Michigan Central railroad station in Detroit was still being done with the loathesome short-handled shovels. In the background of this photo, however, we can glimpse the excavators of the future: smoke-belching job-killers, aka steam shovels.

The men are wearing hats, but not hard hats.

The Michigan Central Station survives today, I'm told, "if just barely." Short-handled shovels, too, are still around, in real life but more spectacularly in the blues.

Homeward Bound

Aug 23, 2011

One evening in 1910, this man got off the train at the station in Ann Arbor, Michigan, picked up his coat and his briefcase, put on his hat, and headed up the hill toward home. It is possible, of course that what I referred to as the man's briefcase may actually be a salesman's sample case or a traveler's overnight case–but overall, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Family Butcher

Jun 14, 2014

This photo from 1910 will have to speak for itself; we certainly cannot speak for it.

The subject is a butcher shop on the Wadestown Road, in the hills above what is now downtown Wellington, New Zealand. For reasons we cannot begin to fathom, the butchers wear striped aprons, the hog carcasses appear to be decorated, and the local dogs are paying no attention to the meat.

Per Google maps, we can determine that the shop building is still in use today, though no longer as a butcher shop. It's now what New Zealanders refer to as a dairy; Americans would call it a convenience store.

In the Kitchen

Nov 5, 2014

Shorpy tells us the hundred-plus-year-old glass plate that produced this photo is something he bought on eBay.  Apparently, nothing is known about the image, except that it features photographic technology, and perhaps also props and fashion, that date it to approximately 1910.

The brand of the stove, Peninsular, suggests the location may be southern Michigan or northern Ohio.

All in all, what we've got here are two unknown people in an unknown kitchen, taking a moment from their unknown lives to look us right straight in the eye, from the distant shores of the early twentieth century.

Note that they've been saving old newspapers up on top of the cabinet.