H96.18.117

Handwritten on the back, "Upper Left- Electric Car Service, 1889. Lower Left- Looking North on Washington at 12th, 1889. Right- Broadway at 20th, 1873. Site of present H.C. Capwell store." This is a contact print with three photos on it. The Photo on the upper left pictures an electric street car with four street car workers standing in front of it. The land around the streetcar is rural. There is a sign on the field behind them advertising subdivisions for sale. The street car itself reads, "4th Avenue. Peralta Heights. East Oakland Hts." It also has a large 8 painted on it's side and it says "Oakland St. Railroad Co." Two side windows on the street car are covered with posters advertising theatre performances. One advertises May Nannary. The dates on the posters are July 16, and July 10. The year written on the back is 1889. The photo on the lower left looking North on Washington at 12th street, looks all the way down the street to city hall. This is Oakland's fourth city hall, which was demolished after the building of the new city hall(1911-1913). The photo shows the street busy with pedestrians and two bicycle riders and a horse drawn carriage. Street car tracks bisect the street and telephone poles line both sides. The photo on the right shows a steam locomotive facing forward aproaching the viewer. The same photo appears in the book "Oakland The Story of a City" by Beth Bagwell, pub. 1982 by Presidio Press. This book says about this photo, "Steam trains on the Telegraph Avenue route carried people from the end of the horsecar line in North Oakland to the University in Berkeley from the 1870s to the 1890s. This scene is looking south on Telegraph Avenue from Fifty-first street." Note, the back of our photogragh identifies the location as "Broadway and 20th streets" the site of the "present H.C. Capwell store". Originally part of an Album #117 (Not original number, but original order.)

Used: H.C. Capwell Co.