City - Philadelphia, PA - Sixth and Market St 1902 - Side by Side

by Mike Savad

Title

City - Philadelphia, PA - Sixth and Market St 1902 - Side by Side

Artist

Mike Savad

Medium

Photograph - Colorized Photo

Description

Colorized photo from 1902
Original title: Market Street at 6th
Photographer: Unknown
Located: Sixth and Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

I've colorized many city images, oddly though, Philadelphia almost always have wagons with roofs, and many are packed with random things. Look at that one in the middle with the orange wheels, there are chickens on the roof. A box strapped to the side, despite having space inside. I've always loved these busy looking shots, so much to look at.

The scene may have been staged, where they stopped traffic long enough to get congested for the photographer. It was probably a publicity shot for the Wanamaker store.

Note how its darker between the rails. At first I wasn't sure why. But then I remembered that Wagons, Streetcars, Our own cars, trains, etc all have the same distance apart, 4ft 8 1/2", the same distance ancient Romans used on their wagons and for some reason we kept that. So what happens is, when they build the tracks, the wagons often fall into the ruts. And the darker areas are horse poop, more than likely.

There was a postcard or two of the area, mostly for that Wanamaker store, which was blurry at best. It showed a tan yellow building with brown highlights, but I think it also had green, so I colored it that way.

Uploaded

December 22nd, 2022

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags