Trolley tracks, Union and Devoe Streets, Schenectady, NY circa 1936
sent to the Albany Times-Union by Joanne DeVoe
Map of Schenectady Railway Company lines [full img]
From a circa 1910 brochure digitized by the Schenectady County Library:
…to-day, the steam locomotive has its supremacy threatened by the new electric engine of the twentieth century. But the modern highway of commerce and of trade, waterways and ways of steel as well, follow the ancient trail of the Indian runner…
…The Albany line of the Schenectady Railway is a splendid example of interurban rapid transit. It crosses the Pine Plains amid great sand-dunes and terminates at the Capital city. Relics of the pre-revolutionary days are constantly found on these plains.
…Albany, the second oldest settlement in the original thirteen States, is a veritable Mecca to the tourist. Following the venturesome navigator, Henry Hudson, who sailed northward from Manhattan in his queer craft, the “Half Moon,” the early Dutch traders made their way and established a trading post on a small island at the mouth of Tawasentha Creek…
…Southward from the Albany road, the Helderbergs rise splendidly against the sky. Their great precipices are noticeable from Stop 6 to best advantage….
I found these while researching which transit line a character in a story I’m writing would have overheard while ill in bed. (Unfortunately, she would have heard a bus. The story takes place in the early ’70s; the trolley must have been entirely or mostly defunct by the time my parents were growing up, in the ’50s, and before I was born the area had re-oriented itself around the Northway.)
It’s so stark, comparing the 1910 map to today, how the interstate not only acceded nothing to natural topography but evaded the existing cities. It was headed to Lake George, to Montreal, and cut due north past the then-hamlet of Clifton Park, which, suddenly convenient, ended up with over 30,000 people without ever getting a downtown. It’s one of the things that strikes me most about pre-interstate/motorway/autoroute maps, the sharp boundary between really dense city and country, the perceptible shape of each place.
