1904 Wind chord, NYC.

[rlk]

Don't want to float your Boater.

 

[danofarlington]

Don't want to float your Boater.

I was just a young boy when I took that shot.

 

[Fletch]

Classic pic. Just the words "SEEING NEW YORK" give it a meta-resonance unimaginable in 1904.

What are these proper, gussied-up folk doing? Why, they're Seeing New York, as everyone ought to do at least once. Imagine the postcards they'll write, in the writing rooms of their hotels, with dip pens in inkwells, electrically-fanned beneath 20' ceilings.

The question is: is that a coach (horse-drawn) or an automobile (bus)?

 

[rlk]

Electric Omnibus
Here's the entire image:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/8314?size=_original

 

[ScottF]

Electric Omnibus
Here's the entire image:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/8314?size=_original

Pigeon-towed kid at the far left is wearing one of those 'hats for boys' that you see in the old ads, but that seemed to have been worn until nothing survived.

And notice that kid in the background, scratching his chin - seems to be checking out that older large woman in the white dress.....hope that worked out for them.

 

[Mid-fogey]

I guess...

...he doesn't want to lose his boater as that blazing fast electric omnibus streaks across the city.

I wonder if people at that time thought wind cord users were dorks.

 

[rlk]

...he doesn't want to lose his boater as that blazing fast electric omnibus streaks across the city.

I wonder if people at that time thought wind cord users were dorks.

He is sitting alone in the back row and staring blankly outward.[huh]

 

[skyvue]

I wonder if people at that time thought wind cord users were dorks.

Neil Steinberg, in Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the History of an American Style, which I'm reading right now, suggests they did.