I am wondering how large cities handled the problem of snow removal from their streets in the days before cars and snow plows. “They shovelled it” might be the answer, but then, who shovelled it? I imagine manually shovelling two feet of snow off the streets of pre-auto Buffalo would require quite a bit of labor. Inmate labor, maybe? Or was there a horse-drawn or steam powered snow plow in use at the time?
I recall seeing archival photos of NYC streets being shovelled by men. I presume it was the job of the sanitation department.
Some of it was moved but many times it was rolled with a big roller weighted down with rocks. They did this because sleighs (sp) were used during winter months, not wheeled vehicles. Incidently the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mtn. Lake NY has one of these rollers and some other horse drawn snow working equipment on display.
A shurt blurb about snow removal before plows…
http://www.provincetown.com/banner/lookingback/1999/02_04.html
Also a photo…
http://www.gorhamcu.com/ghs/photos/snowroller.html
Great pictures, funneefarmer.
While the town I called home had regular plows and other snow machinery, the dump trucks often unloaded from a hill top into a baseball field. Smack onto home plate. Long after the rest of the snow had gone, we could still go to this ball park and play “King of the Hill” there.
Thanks for the nice reminder.
Thanks for the great links. It never occurred to me that they would adjust their vehicle to the road conditions rather than the other way around.
A lot of these seasonal jobs were taken by what were called “hobos” back then. Guys would wander around towns offering to shovel coal, chop wood, plow snow, either for change or for food.
I know I’m a big ol’ Dinosaur (manhattan said so!) but if you get tired of looking at websites and want a BOOK, I recommend the Eric Sloane pop Americana stuff. OUR VANISHING LANDSCAPE is a prime example.
That’s the one where I learned that they used rollers on the roadbeds not just to make easier going for the sleighs and sleds, but to KEEP it good and frozen for as long as possible into the thaw.
If you wanted to move something big and heavy back then, it was MUCH easier to pull/push a sled across the ice than roll wagon wheels down a rutted roadway.
Eric Sloane. He drew nice little pictures for his books, too.
Uke
Wow, I’d almost forgotten about the Adirondack Museum. Great place, as far as I remember.
Uke, I definitely agree with the Eric Sloan recommendation. His “An Age of Barns” is one of my favorites.
“‘They shovelled it’ might be the answer, but then, who shovelled it?”
Where a city had a streetcar system, the company that operated the system had to have a franchise from the city to maintain tracks in, and wires over, the public streets. In areas where it snows regularly, it was often a condition of the franchise that the street railway company plow the snow on the streets where its tracks ran. Plows were mounted on the front of the streetcars to clear a path.
I don’t think that they were required to hand-shovel the rest of the roadway; clearing a path down the middle of the street, where the tracks were, was sufficient.