A century of American streetcars, horsecars, cable cars, interurbans, and trolleys.

From workers' cottages in Milwaukee's Polish community to Alaskan homesteads during the Great Depression, from early American retail stores to nineteenth-century prisons, different types of buildings reflect the diverse responses of people to their architectural needs. Through inquiry into such topics, the contributors to this volume examine a variety of building forms as they assess the current state of vernacular architecture studies. Because scholars in vernacular architecture have come to consider thematic questions rather than simply to look at types of structures, the essays chosen for this collection address issues of how people, power, and places intersect. They demonstrate not only the inextricable links between people and place but also show how power relationships are defined by spatial organization--and how this use of space has helped define the distinction between private and public. The essays examine a wide range of forms, from camp meetings to trolley cottages, to consider what buildings might reveal about their makers, users, and even interpreters. One article, for example, will give readers a new appreciation of balloon framing in Midwest farmhouses, refuting popular notions that it was a single individual's invention. Another considers servants' quarters in Apartheid-era South Africa to explore the relationship between black domestic workers and their white employers. Drawn from the Vernacular Architecture Forum conferences of 1996 and 1997, these thirteen essays make significant contributions to the study of design and building processes and the adaptation of architectural forms and spaces over time. They help redefine the scope of "vernacular" and provide new models for better understanding the built environment. The Editors: Sally McMurry is professor of history at Pennsylvania State University and author of Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America. Annmarie Adams is associate professor of architecture at McGill University and author of Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900.

Streetcar service arrived in Philadelphia in the 1850s, shortly after the consolidation of the city. After the Civil War, the horse-drawn omnibus gave way to a comprehensive network of streetcar lines with some routes measuring nineteen miles in length. By 1915, the electrification of the streetcar increased the number of routes in Philadelphia to a total of eighty-six. During the trolley's heyday, the city provided a vast test track for such companies as J.G. Brill, Kimball and Gorton Car Manufacturers, and the Budd Wheel Company. The Wharton Railroad Switch Company revolutionized the manufacture of switches and tracks. Of the lines that once operated in Philadelphia, five are still running today. Philadelphia Trolleys contains a variety of rare images, including a postcard of the Point Breeze Amusement Park, photographs of motormen's uniform badges and buttons, architectural drawings, early stock certificates, and a photograph of the Toonerville Trolley used in the silent movies produced by Lubin Studios in the 1920s.

Fascinating stories of New Jersey's rich railroading history

The handsome multicolored streetcar is a nostalgic icon of the some of the most romantic and heritage-rich locales in America, including San Francisco, New Orleans and Chicago, immortalised on stage and screen in classics including 'Meet Me In St Louis' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Streetcars of America chronicles these vehicles from the earliest animal-drawn carriages to the height of their popularity in the 1920s, when there were more than 1,200 tram railways, to the turning of the tide in the mid-twentieth century when congestion and attacks from the automobile industry eventually pushed streetcars from most urban landscapes. But it also looks at the recent efforts to revive tram heritage that have led to vintage streetcars becoming a hip and environmentally-friendly daily commuter service, as well as tourist attraction, in more than thirty cities including Memphis and Washington DC.

Maury Klein is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and society. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet - the "power revolution" that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century. The steam engine; the incandescent bulb; the electric motor-inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The cast of characters includes inventors like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs like George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, bare-knuckled battles in the marketplace. In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked and cutthroat--a biography of America in its most astonishing decades.

“A hobbyist’s enthusiasm, curiosity, and attention to detail exude from this technological history of Ohio’s streetcar industry . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice At the beginning of the twentieth century, the street railway industry was one of the largest in the nation. Once ubiquitously visible on the city streets, by mid-century the streetcar was nothing more than a distant memory. Ohio was home to several large streetcar systems, especially in Cleveland and Cincinnati, and had more interurban tracks than any other state in the union. Thus, Ohio served as one of the street railway industry’s greatest centers of manufacturing. Built to Move Millions examines the manufacture of streetcars and interurbans within the state of Ohio between 1900 and 1940. In addition to discussing the five major car builders that were active in Ohio during this period, the book addresses Ohio companies that manufactured the various components that went into these vehicles. Includes extensive photos