Shorpy's: The 100 Year Old Photo Blog

You may have noticed; I like blogs. I read a *lot*; and, I love the fact that blogs allow anyone to reach a wide audience with their writing and particular point of view. In an earlier post, I mentioned RSS feed readers. I use google's Reader, and with it I subscribe to an ever changing array of blogs. Every post from every blog is collected in google reader, saving me tons of time moving between individual blog web sites. Instead, I just log link to my Reader, and there are the feeds I read every day.

One of the blogs to which I subscribe is Shorpy's 100 Year Old Photo Blog. Shorpy collects old photographs and publishes one a day on his blog--allowing an insight into the past 100 years of American history that words alone never will allow.

Below, find a link to a Shorpy photo of the 7th Street canal bridge here in Richmond.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/2432

Shorpy published this photo just a couple of days back. It was taken just after Richmond burned at the end of the Civil War. By the way, the city burned because the Confederates wanted to deny the Union solders access to Richmond's infrastructure. The Union solders put out the fires. The fleeing Confederates started them.

In any event, here is one beginning of the South's period of Reconstruction. Look closely at the photo, and you'll see a couple of the canal boats which provided much of Richmond's wealth, that is, up until the 1880s, when the canal system was replaced by the railroad system we see today. Also notice the squaller. To really get a handle on history, you've got to pay attention to details like the kind of places folks lived. Imagine the water. It isn't the relatively sanitary water you'll find today. It smelled and not in a good way.

Think about Richmond during Reconstruction. Think about its water. Did you ever notice the White House of the Confederacy (What? You haven't every visited? Shame.) has its porch on what we would consider the back of the house? Why? Because the street in front of the house would have been a quagmire of mud (or dust), refuse dumped in the street, and horse scat. The smell alone was overpowering; so, the well to do faced their porches--where they would come to escape the heat of Richmond's summers-- toward the back of the house. Now imagine how that canal--indeed, anything down hill from downtown Richmond--would have smelled. Heck, it wasn't until the 1880s that Richmond began to clean the water most folks drank every day. That's why the first pond in Byrd park was built, that is, as a settling pond for the water the city pumped up the hill for folks to drink. Before that settling pond, the water the city distributed was raw Jame's River water. Uck. And, it wasn't until later city water was treated for bacteria. Uck and double uck.

Still, the picture is very, very cool.

Let me make a suggestion. As part of your studying US history this semester, why not subscribe to or visit Shorpy's everyday and see what kind of insight the photos give you into a very different world, but one which created and continues to influence the one we share.

http://www.shorpy.com/