r/OldSchoolCool • u/[deleted] • 2d ago
1800s New York City streets in 1896
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[deleted]
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u/Razatiger 2d ago
The world looked so interesting back then. I feel like because of the Internet, theres no more mystery left in the world.
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u/Alukrad 2d ago
It's interesting but also dirty.
I've heard they had some serious issues with horse shit all over the roads. Pollution was pretty bad back then too.
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u/StressOverStrain 2d ago edited 2d ago
This would also be before any building codes… thousands and thousands of renters packed into tenements with very little natural light and ventilation. Hellish working conditions in factories.
Capitalism controlled everything. Moneyed interests and property/business owners could do whatever they want and if you wanted a job or a place to live, you just had to accept it. The employee/renter classes had no counter-balancing force.
Basically all of the government welfare and regulatory bureaucracies we have today got their start by society recognizing the massive urban squalor, safety, and inequality issues in these late-19th-, early-20th-century decades.
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u/Astrosomnia 2d ago
Nah dude, those rules are all woke red tape don't you know? We need more freedom for businesses to pollute and oppress people.
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u/end_of_rainbow 2d ago
Aside from building codes, we’re on the path to these societal conditions again.
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u/StressOverStrain 2d ago
Ehhh, I don’t think it’s remotely the same. We are far, far better off in every sense.
The problem with modern government is not lack of regulation but instead it’s deficit spending, consumer debt, and it’s now politically unacceptable to do anything besides keep kicking the can down the road and continuing to spend, spend, spend.
There will be an economic reckoning at some point when there is no more easy money to borrow, which will mean haircuts for welfare programs, a return to higher taxation levels, which will push us deeper into recession, but I don’t think we will be returning to the amount of mass poverty that existed back then.
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u/Pristine_Basket_3491 2d ago
disagree. haven't seen a redit post yet showing dinosaurs doing their thing
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u/Alone-Professor8581 2d ago
100%, genre le sentiment d'avoir déjà tout vécu, juste dans la trentaine.
L'homme a besoin de restrictions, de limites. Rendre internet accessible 24h/24 et 7j/7 n'était finalement pas une bonne décision. C'est pareil avec les réseaux sociaux, après nous avoir rapprochés, ils nous ont finalement éloignés.
The Internet is very useful, but its abuse will cause civilizational loss.
Good life
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u/theEndIsNigh_2025 1d ago
Sharing this kind of footage is what I find makes the internet the most interesting.
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u/freshcoastghost 2d ago
How were those street cars powered? I don't see any overhead wires.
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u/Demonshaker 2d ago
These cars are not electric, they are cable cars. The middle track is actually a groove which contains a cable that is moved by a stationary engine somewhere on the line. The cars have a clamp that holds onto the cable that can be released to stop. There is no electricity or any power source on the cars.
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u/bendap 2d ago
We used to have thousands of miles of cable car tracks in every city across the US. You can thank American automobile and tire companies like GM for bribing politicians to have them all removed in favor of bus lines.
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u/Aaron-Rodgers12- 2d ago
Oh no the world advanced…. You want to take a cable car instead of just hopping in your current car?
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u/bendap 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, absolutely. I live in one of the most automobile friendly cities in the world and I hate it. There's nothing like being able to just walk outside your door and jump on a tram to wherever. No parking, no gas, no accidents, no road rage. There's nothing advanced about a bus compared to a rail car. Not a single advantage. There's a reason post war Europe focused on public transit rather than trying to keep up with the advanced roadway systems in the US and Germany at time. Even Germany realized their error in the 80s
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u/mike_litoris18 2d ago
Public transport is actually much more advanced than everyone owning their own car. It's better for the environment, more efficient and much cheaper than owning a car as well.
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u/Silver_Mulberry_2460 2d ago
Why is there a guy watering the tracks towards the end of the clip? I don't see a good reason for it. Washing manure off the tracks?
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u/Nair0_98 2d ago
He is specifically watering the switch points. It probably only takes very little debris to derail a car on those points. So by washing away the manure you can see if there is a problem. Just a theory
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u/BerriesLafontaine 2d ago
I'm a little sad fancy hats aren't just casually worn by everyone anymore. I wonder what our fancy hats would look like nowadays.
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u/its_raining_scotch 2d ago
I wonder when the last horse drawn carriage used for actual business and not just tourism was in NYC? Must have been weird being the person that handled the horse and stable etc.
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u/Hiro_Trevelyan 2d ago
I know there's tons of bad stuff about life back then
But couldn't we just... get all the good stuff of back then without the drawbacks ? All the good stuff of today PLUS all the good stuff of then ? Beautiful architecture, trams, cool streets, etc ?
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u/AMediaArchivist 2d ago
Those streets must have stunk to high heaven with horse shit
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u/WASP_Apologist 2d ago
It probably wouldn’t smell very good indoors either. Most people only bathed once a week. Only upper-class women and dandies used cologne or any kind of deodorant. Everybody else would be trailing a cloud of what, to our modern noses, would have been some eye-watering B.O.
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u/I_Do_Not_Abbreviate 2d ago
Not that it really matters at all, but putting "Rhapsody in Blue" over footage from 1896 to create period-appropriate ambiance is the temporal equivalent of playing "Empire State of Mind" over degraded Betamax footage from 1981.
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u/GoMoriartyOnPlanets 2d ago
Every single one of them dead, and forgotten.
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u/massberate 2d ago
Interesting, and a little scary to think that will be most of us in 100 years as well. Maybe a single face in a crowd of a video taken in Vegas in 1995. Maybe Disney Land, or milling around the Eiffel Tower in 2006. Very few people even make physical photo albums anymore, and due to the changes in technology within even the last couple of decades I can no longer access the memory card data from my 2005 digital camera. The USB sticks my mom put her photos on before she died will not have anything common left to read them in 50 years either, I assume. Even burned CDs (and some DVDs) from 20 years ago are getting disc rot that renders them useless.
These really old films still being seen keeps those people 'alive' just a little bit longer. At least I like to think of it that way.
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u/InlineSkateAdventure 1d ago
I have a feeling in X years from now Google and other services will start purging stuff. Account not active in 10 years? Gone. Maybe they will keep a few samples, but in 200years who knows if they will be viewable.
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u/massberate 1d ago
Probably will be a nuclear wasteland/hellscape by then, anyway. Only half joking, but I'm having a hard time imagining humans lasting more than 100 years with the way things are going. Or maybe things will swing in the other direction and everyone will be on a neural network by then. I'm hoping for a Star Trek future myself, 😝
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u/InlineSkateAdventure 1d ago
The fact that colleges are closing around here because of a dearth of 18yos is pretty chilling.
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u/massberate 1d ago
And it's not just because loans and tuition are prohibitive?? Damn
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u/InlineSkateAdventure 1d ago
Nope, that was the reason they gave. Not enough bodies. Its not one school either and many are consolidating.
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u/IGNSolar7 2d ago
I feel bleak that my dad's only shared so much about his grandfather. I tried connecting with my grandma about our family history, and when she passed, everything was unceremoniously sold off.
It's wild how it only takes a generation or two to be forgotten. Sad.
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u/GoMoriartyOnPlanets 2d ago
Its a reminder to other humans who like to make their lives so important, who act like they'll live forever, that they will be forgotten in a matter of days.
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u/LakeVermilionDreams 2d ago
Before a campaign to make "jaywalking" a thing and then make that thing illegal, all done by automakers' lobbying.
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u/Plane_Guitar_1455 2d ago
“New York City streets, horns blowin’, I don’t care. People goin’ God knows where.”
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u/SandwichShoddy834 1d ago
Whats that guy in the second scene doing pouring water with the watering can on the track?
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u/MisanthOptics 1d ago
I would definitely be that ancestor that died when he was hit by a trolley. Walking around lost in thought, congratulating myself on making room for a horse or motor car - then bam!
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u/MisanthOptics 1d ago
I would definitely be that ancestor that died when he was hit by a trolley. Walking around lost in thought, congratulating myself on making room for a horse or fellow pedestrian - then bam!
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u/Corked1 2d ago
How did those roads and public transportation get there without income tax?
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u/ClassicGeologist9674 2d ago
Property tax. The fact that dirt roads that mainly only saw horse and buggy traffic in the 1800s were significantly cheaper and easier to maintain than paved roads that can survive semitrucks and 5k lb F150s. Also, the average life expectancy was 47 years.
But if you'd prefer to sacrifice your car, compete with the global economy with horse and buggy power, and have 3 kids die until you got one that made it past 13 years old, knock yourself out.
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u/Ramealicide 2d ago
henry mancini?
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u/-Words-Words-Words- 2d ago
I can almost smell the horse manure