Carey Square, Chelsea, Massachusetts, circa 1910

About this postcard

View of Carey Square in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where a curving street with trolley tracks opens onto a three-story brick commercial block with red-and-white striped awnings over its storefronts; a horse-drawn wagon and a few pedestrians occupy the roadway, with frame houses and bare street trees on the right and a low hill beyond. Chelsea, an industrial city on the Mystic River opposite Boston, rebuilt much of its downtown after the devastating fire of 1908, and cards like this one record the commercial squares of that era. The scene captures a typical New England urban crossroads of the period, with overhead trolley wires, a street lamp on a mast arm, and early automobiles or wagons sharing the pavement.