A Corner of Main and Common Streets
A professional photograph of a two-story brick commercial block, its storefronts lettered for a drug store, an electric light company, and Murray the Electrician, with trolley tracks and pedestrians at the corner.
TranscriptionThe photograph
Upper-story window signs: MURRAY ELECTRIC CO. MURRAY THE ELECTRICIAN Second-story window lettering (partial): LOANS LIFE Storefront signs: ELECTRIC LIGHTING GOODS (partial, left edge) N.R.W. GASLIGHT CO. M. LEAHY[?] J.A. HIGGINS SEED Drugs M.B. CHURCH Awning lettering: GIFTS [illegible] NOVELTIES[?] [illegible] PHOTOGRAPHY [illegible]
Handwritten, verso$15.00 Main + Common St. #57
The story on the paper
A dealer's pencil note on the back places this corner at Main and Common Streets, and everything in the frame belongs to the new century: streetcar tracks running through the foreground, the overhead trolley wires, and a storefront skyline stacked with the trades of 1910. The N.R.W. Gaslight Co. kept its sign up beside electricians and druggists; gas and electricity were still fighting for the same buildings.
Murray the Electrician and the Murray Electric Co. advertised from the second-story windows. J.A. Higgins' shop and M.B. Church's drug store, its arrow sign jutting over the sidewalk, anchored the ground floor. The window lettering reading LOANS and LIFE hints at an insurance or loan agent upstairs, the classic tenant of American commercial blocks.
The people on the sidewalk, men in bowlers, women in white waists, children at the curb, were part of the picture whether the photographer meant them or not. They are why the photograph feels lived in rather than surveyed.
- Type
- Photograph (gelatin silver print)
- Date
- circa 1905-1915
- Place
- Main and Common Streets, Waltham, Massachusetts