This real photo postcard image shows the four-track Metropolitan “L” bridge (actually two separate bridges, side by side), but it also shows a small experimental lifeboat moored at left. One author’s research into the history of this boat is featured in this post, and also sheds some further light on when this photo was taken.

From the start of the Trolley Dodger in 2015, I hoped this blog would become a resource for others, and I am pleased that this has happened. Sometimes these inquiries take strange and unexpected turns, and that is certainly the case regarding the early real photo postcard shown above. This interesting tangent of Chicago history is covered in detail further down in this post. Research can raise just as many questions as it answers, and that is definitely what happened here regarding the small experimental boat visible in the lower left-hand corner of this and other postcards of the Met bridge.

We also have a goodly number of excellent images for your perusal, from some of the great traction photographers.

We regret the passing on April 30th of Robert Heinlein, aged 84. He was one of the giants in his field, and our next post will be a tribute to him. Some of Mr. Heinlein’s photos are in my recent book The North Shore Line, and I am glad he was able to see the finished product. He spent his entire career sharing his knowledge and helping others, and he will be sorely missed. You can read his obituary here.

Keep those cards and letters coming in, folks.

-David Sadowski

PS- You might also like our Trolley Dodger Facebook auxiliary, a private group that now has 1,162 members.

Our friend Kenneth Gear has a Facebook group for the Railroad Record Club. If you enjoy listening to audio recordings of classic railroad trains, whether steam, electric, or diesel, you might consider joining.

FYI, the Hoosier Traction Facebook Group celebrates electric transit in Indiana and the Midwest. It also supports the activities of the annual Hoosier Traction Meet (although not affiliated with the North American Transit Historical Society, which organizes that event).

I will be giving a program on my new North Shore Line book on 7:30 pm on Friday evening, May 19th, at Chicago Union Station for the Railroad & Shortlines Club of Chicago. There is no charge. Please do not arrive before 7:15 pm.

Chicago Union Station
Room 107A
500 W. Jackson Blvd.
Chicago, Illinois

Please enter at 500 W. Jackson Boulevard, between Clinton and Canal. Call 312 725-0432 during the meeting for assistance.

We gave two presentations in April that were well attended and received. First, we spoke at the Libertyville Historical Society on the 17th. You can view that presentation here. To date, there have been about 3500 views.

On the 20th, we were at the History Center of lake Bluff and Lake Forest. You can view that presentation here.

Postcards From the Bridge

Sandy Cleary writes:

Good morning! I hope this finds you well 🙂

I’ve been lost on the site for a few weeks since finding it—it scratches an itch I also have—and I’m really grateful for the work that you’ve done in documenting a lot of pretty niche historical artifacts. I’m very curious about one in particular. It’s mentioned in this post here, above the text “I recently bought this real photo postcard, circa 1910.”

I’m pretty certain it comes from the summer of 1907. The boat docked in the lower left of that photo is an obscure lifeboat designed by Robert Brown, of Chicago; it was tied up to the Chicago Sanitary District dock in 1907 but Brown stopped paying docking fees in March, 1908 and it’s absent in another 1908 photo of the bridge. Debris on the loading dock to the northeast of the bridge matches debris visible in Detroit Publishing Co. photo 070152 (here at the LOC), which was taken at the same time as 070153 (LOC link); based on the SS Pueblo’s transit records that photo must’ve been taken on July 30th, 1907.

I’ve been working on writing up the history of Robert Brown’s boat, which features in some other Chicago lore a few years later, and for which the photographic so far consists of only three photos: the two Detroit Publishing Co. ones, and whoever took the picture used in the postcard you found. It was reused in numerous postcards (colorized with the title “Elevated R. R. Jackknife Bridge over Chicago River, Chicago”—you can find examples on eBay).

The one you posted, though, is by far the clearest. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the postcard’s copyright or who might have printed it? I’ve never been able to find what the photographic source might’ve been. A clearer example, one which might make the text on the white sign north of the boat legible and make it easier to fix the exact date the photo was taken, would be invaluable but I’m not sure where to start looking.

(Also, the version you’ve found is evidently a different crop—the colorized version shows more of the western bank and the dock itself).

I appreciate your time—any pointers on anything more about that postcard or the photo that was responsible for it would be incredibly helpful. The work you did on restoring the one you found was already enough for me to conclude when the boat was actually tied up at Van Buren St., which I’d been despairing of finding possible.

Kind regards
Sandy

Thanks for writing. It’s remarkable how small details in such photographs can be of so much use to researchers today.

In the meantime, what a remarkable piece of scholarship you have achieved!

As you can see, the reverse side of the postcard doesn’t identify the maker. But perhaps it can still be identified by comparison with other postcards with the same printing, whose manufacturers are known to experts.

Would it be alright for me to share your original note with the readers of my blog (and accompanying Facebook group)? You never know what useful information others might have to share.

Sandy Cleary:

Absolutely, you can share with whomever! The information I have is unfortunately pretty limited. From my boat-focused point of view, what’s known is:

1. Chicagoan carpenter Robert Brown designed and built an odd-shaped lifeboat in 1905, which was photographed for a magazine in ~1905/1906
2. His company, the International Automatic Lifeboat Company, paid the Chicago Sanitary District a $5/mo docking fee for the Van Buren St. dock between October, 1906 and March, 1908
3. Hans Behm took three photos of the Metropolitan West Side railroad bridge on July 30th, two of which depict the boat.
4. It’s gone by a September, 1908 photo of the bridge taken, I think, by the Chicago Sanitary District (because the MWRD has posted this picture a few times)
5. The only other photo is the one from the postcard, which must’ve been taken between October, 1906 and March, 1908. The overall bridge configuration seems to be the same between the postcard and the 1907 photos, as does the debris seen on the loading dock on the northeast side of the bridge:

After that the boat disappears for a few years, until it was found sunk in the north draw of the Wells Street Bridge (just south of the Chicago & North Western depot there. Then it was shown for a few months as “The Foolkiller,” putatively the world’s first submarine, after which it disappears again and is now only really relevant for weird Chicago lore.

Fortunately a lot of the Chicago Sanitary District records are online, and I was able to get in touch with someone from Commonwealth Edison who also had some useful information, but I have to imagine a lot of the information from the L companies pre-merger is gone. It seems to me that there might have been some reason why people were taking pictures of the Met’s bridge around the same time, but I’m not sure what that might have been.

I know that there was pressure to have it removed because of how significantly it impacted the channel by ~1911 or so—tracing over old Sanborn maps from 1906 really drives home how dramatic that constriction was:

At the time the western span of the Jackson Blvd. bridge and the Metropolitan West Side crossed what Sanborn identifies as property belonging to the Pacific, Fort Wayne & Chicago, during its period when it was not part of the Penn, I think—I am not a train girl. The Met’s viaduct would’ve crossed over the PFW&C freight house, before that whole west bank became Chicago & North Western property again. In any case the bridge wasn’t actually torn down until 1961 (by that point, as I understand it, the CTA hadn’t been using it to carry rail traffic since 1958).

Thank you so much again for your time and for your help with this. How these photo postcards worked has been something of a mystery to me. Numerous different versions seem to have been made, and I just don’t know whether these were the same company, or different companies skirting copyright because Google Images wasn’t a thing at the time, or what. But the fact that there is such a high-quality photo, anywhere, is extremely heartening.

I suspect the postcard that I have was very short-lived in the marketplace, as this was a transition period between real photo postcards and printed ones. Even if some of the colorized versions may have used the same original negative as a starting point, the eventual results look more and more like drawings rather than photographs.

As to the sudden popularity of pictures of the Met “L” bridge, starting in 1907, this coincided with a major change in how people could write messages on postcards:

DIVIDED BACK PERIOD: 1907-1915

“In 1907, a major change on the address side of postcards occurred. This change was prompted by the Universal Postal Congress, the legislative body of the Universal Postal Union. The convention decreed that postal cards produced by governments of member nations could have messages on the left half of the address side, effective October 1, 1907. The Universal Postal Congress also decreed that after March 1, 1907, government-produced cards in the United States could bear messages on the address side.2 Congress passed an act on March 1, 1907, in compliance with the Union’s decree, allowing privately produced postcards to bear messages on the left half of the card’s back. The next day, the Postmaster-General issued Order No. 146, granting privileges to privately produced postcards that were already granted in international mail, including the allowance of message space. On June 13, 1907, the Postmaster-General issued Order No. 539, which allowed government-produced postcards to bear messages on the left half of the address side.3 These changes to the backs of postcards ushered in the Divided Back Period, which spans from 1907 until 1915. The Divided Back Period is also known as the “Golden Age of Postcards,” due to the vast popularity of postcards during this time period.”

“Another type of postcard that began to be produced and popularly used during the Divided Back period and through the White Border period is the “real photo” postcard. “Real photo” postcards were first produced using the Kodak “postcard camera.” The postcard camera could take a picture and then print a postcard-size negative of the picture, complete with a divided back and place for postage.”

Source: https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/postcard/postcard-history

Sandy Cleary:

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard “real photo post card” as a term before I read your blog, and then noticed “RPPC” everywhere on eBay.

There are, as far as I can tell, three versions of this postcard. The first two are the colorized ones, which are labeled on the back as no. 171 of the Franklin Post Card Co.—of Germany, although ironically the earliest example I can find, postmarked August 17th, 1909, says “Made in Germany.” There were two distinct crops of that. The first (type A) is the widest crop, and it’s the one where the “E” in “Elevated” is written more like a backwards 3.

The second (type B) is one that the UIC Library gives copyright to Copelin Commercial Photographers in a black-and-white photographic form. This seems to be more common; the earliest postmark so far I’ve found is from September 13, 1910. Both of these two show up with postmarks as late as 1915. They went through different print runs, though; the back variously says:

* Aug. 17 1909: “No. 171. Made in Germany” (Type A)
* Sep. 13 1910: “No. 171.” (Type B)
* Aug 16, 1911: “No. 171” (Type B)
* Nov. 3 1911: “171” (Type B) (it’s possible the “No.” has been scratched off)
* Oct. 14 1912: “No. 171. Publ. by Franklin Post Card Co., Chicago, Ill. Made in Germany” (Type A)
* Aug. 13 1915: “No. 171. Publ. by Franklin Post Card Co., Chicago, Ill.” (Type B)

…As I write this up I realize this means that the widest version is rarer because it’s the German version. The design on the back, with the more ornate “Post Card” lettering, is identical to other postcards published by (for example) M. Weixelbaum, of Lima, and Provincetown Advocate and the Cardinell-Vincent Co. in addition to Franklin. I don’t understand why some postcards were made in Germany and some were not. Apparently the early 1900s was “postcard mania” in Germany, according to Deutsche Welle. I’d never heard of that before.

Anyway, the third one is the one you’ve found, which has different writing, and is also a much closer crop. Here are all three, superimposed:

What is a little puzzling to me is that the postcard you found is of such high quality that implies (to me) that a medium-format negative was accessible to whomever wound up creating all of the derivatives, which I wouldn’t have expected if it was being held in, say, the Franklin vault. But if it was a Franklin photo, the reverse doesn’t look like the reverse of any Franklin postcards. I tried image-searching for postcard backs looking for something similar, and turned up these from Vermont, which use the same language but a different font in “Post Card.”

Given your link, that creates the unfortunate possibility that what you have is, in fact, the only copy of that postcard, because it was created by someone who was interested in the bridge (or liked the composition), had access to the original, and printed it as a one-off postcard, which is why so far as I can tell it’s never appeared elsewhere. The title is odd—as you note, this isn’t the Northwestern, and the bridge seems to have been well-known as a Metropolitan West Side bridge to locals. Or perhaps it dates from the 20s or 30s, and whoever was writing it just guessed. I don’t know.

I’m also not sure if it’s significant (beyond “postcard mania”) that the early examples are German. There was a big German population in Chicago at the time, and the Germans apparently did like postcards. Germans also liked bridges; Scherzer was born in Illinois, but his parents were German immigrants. One of the earlier photos of the Met bridge (I think it might be the oldest) is from a German postcard:

Text says: “‘Folding’ Bridge over the Chicago River (bridge closed)”; handwriting says (I think): “Dear Dad: Sent you today (payday) $1.00 worth of 1 and 2-cent post stamps. Let me know if these arrived safely.”

It has occurred to me that I could poke around here in Berlin to see if there’s anything promising, but if memory serves most Chicagoan immigrants came from further north (Pomerania and such). Here in Berlin our train esoterica is only the “ghost stations” from the Cold War and that some of our subway stops are mildly radioactive because they used uranium oxide glazing in the tile.

Anyway! Thank you again for your time, and for the link to that Smithsonian article!

This is all very interesting to me, and should also interest my readers. Thanks very much for sharing these wonderful images.

In the early years of photography, negatives were usually large enough to be contact printed onto photo paper, without using an enlarger. The “chicken scratch” writing on my postcard could have been inked onto a glass plate, on top of the negative, or it may have been applied to the negative itself. The proportions of postcards are more rectangular than many of the standard film formats of the time, which may help explain the cropping.

While doing further research into this story, I came across a series of blog posts.

Is this something you wrote?

Sandy Cleary:

Yeah, that’s me 🙂

The “Foolkiller” was originally covered by Cecil Adams in the “Straight Dope” column of the Chicago alternative weekly Chicago Reader, and then later by podcaster Mark Chrisler of The Constant. It’s been stuck in my head for about fifteen years, so I’ve been trying to pull together as much as I can rather than leaving things on various email threads or chat discussions, in case any one else ever goes searching. It’s also been a good way to start organizing my thoughts on the matter (I don’t think many people read that blog).

That’s an interesting steer, re: the negatives. The UIC holding is described as a “photographic print” although I understand the MWRD (the Chicago water authority) apparently found a number of glass plates in their archives. The Library of Congress also (I think) has the original Hans Behm photos, which are described as glass 8×10 negatives (here’s one of them below). I need to read up on that era of photography, apparently.

(The Detroit Publishing Co. photos taken by Behm were also turned into colorized photo postcards, although they don’t seem to have been as popular, or at least most of the Met depictions are not those. There’s an early one that the Central Electric Railfans’ Association wrote up about ten years ago; that’s given a copyright date of 1907 but it must be earlier because the bridge doesn’t have the circular pilings that it would retain for most of its life and were in place by 1907; on the other hand, the Palmer Building is visible (leftmost skyscraper) and that was built sometime between 1903 and 1906).

FYI, I wrote that CERA blog post you refer to.

Sandy Cleary:

I’ve also seen your name on the Industrial History page about the bridge, come to think of it.

And this brings the story up to date. Ms. Cleary’s blog posts, linked above, shed additional light on the story of this experimental boat, which I can summarize as follows. This was one of several attempts at creating a safer lifeboat, to be carried on ships, and for rescues. A number of such ideas were patented in the late 1800s and early 1900s, all very speculative, of course.

The International Automatic Lifeboat Company prototype, designed by Robert Brown, was moored in the Chicago River for some period of time, and not always near the Metropolitan West Side “L” bridge. The US Navy studied the concept and decided it was not practical, as it would have been too difficult to get people into this boat during rescues. This most likely doomed its prospects.

At some point, the boat sank, and was later pulled out of the river, whereupon some enterprising persons displayed it as a supposed submarine, which it was not.

The postcard we have mistakenly identifies this as the Northwestern “L”. In actuality, it was the Metropolitan West side Elevated, but some of its trains did go to Chicago’s northwest side. The Northwestern “L” actually ran to the north side, despite the name.

I hope that further information may shed more light on this story in the future. In the meantime, here are some additional examples of postcards showing the Met “L” bridge.

-David Sadowski

Trackwork near the Met bridge was somewhat complex. Tracks to the right fanned out, leading to the Wells Street Terminal. The tracks at left connected to the Loop “L” via Van Buren Street. (Robert Heinlein Collection)

We are looking west from the Wells Street Terminal towards the dual bridges over the Chicago River. (Robert Heinlein Collection)

This is the only photo I have seen that shows the interior of the Met bridge interlocking tower. (Robert Heinlein Collection)

A 1906 postcard, made at a time when messages could only go on the front of the card.

The back of the 1906 card. Only the address was permitted here.

A 1908 postcard.

By 1908, messages were allowed on the left side of the card back.

A 1909 postcard, based on the 1907 photo.

The rear of the 1909 postcard.

A 1911 postcard, based on the 1907 photo.

The back of a 1911 postcard.

A 1912 postcard.

The back side of a 1912 postcard.

A 1915 postcard, clearly based on the 1907 photo.

The back side of a 1915 postcard.

A 1919 postcard.

The back side of a 1919 postcard.

A 1920 postcard.

And here are some later views of the bridge, from various angles:

A view of the Metropolitan “L” crossing the Chicago River on July 10, 1949. We are looking to the northwest.

Over the years, I have seen many poor quality duplicate slides with this view, looking to the northwest, with a Garfield Park “L” train crossing the Met bridge over the Chicago River, with Union Station in the background. However, this was scanned from an original red border Kodachrome slide, circa 1955-58. The name of the photographer is not known. This must be a Garfield train, and the results are stunning. Douglas cars were re-routed over the Lake Street “L” in 1954. Logan Square trains began running via the Milwaukee-Dearborn Subway in 1951.

CTA 2256 is part of a four-car Met train, turning from Market Street onto the double bridge over the Chicago River in March 1951.
(Truman Hefner Photo)

This picture of the old Met bridge over the Chicago River is undated, but probably dates to circa 1952-55 based on the type of red border Kodachrome mount it is in. But it is certainly after the the other picture in this post, taken at much the same location, since the building at rear, or part of it, was in the process of being torn down. This was not related to expressway construction, since the “L” at this point was north of there. Once the Congress rapid transit line opened in 1958, this section of “L” was taken out of service and by the early 1960s it had been torn down.

Stylish Coit Tower sits atop Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, and has afforded an unparalleled view since its completion in 1933. In April 1987, when this picture was taken, the view included Muni streetcar 578, built in 1896. Although it resembles a cable car, it uses overhead wire. It is occasionally operated for special events and is the oldest streetcar in use in the country. In recent years wheelchair access was added.

A Milwaukee Road push-pull commuter train is at Rondout (an unincorporated area in Lake County, IL) on September 2, 1963. Bi-levels were introduced to the Milwaukee Road around 1961 and ridership was much lower than it is today, so often one car sufficed instead of seven or eight as you see today on Metra. The station here was removed around 1965 on what is now the Metra Milwaukee District North Line. I believe we are looking to the northwest, and that the overpass may be the former North Shore Line Mundelein branch, which had been abandoned on January 21, 1963. There was a tower located kitty-corner to the station, to the right and behind the photographer, which was last used in 2015. (William D. Volkmer Photo)

Don’s Rail Photos (via Archive.org): “410 was built as a trailer observation car by Cincinnati Car in June 1923, #2640. It was out of service in 1932. It was rebuilt on December 31, 1942, as a two motor coach by closing in the open platform and changing the seating.” Here is how it looked in December 1958 at the Mundelein Terminal. (Russell D. Porter Photo)

North Shore Line Electroliner 801-802 is on the CTA “L” in August 1962.

This is a nice overhead view of a four-car train of North Shore Line Silverliners on Chicago’s “L” in August 1962.

North Shore Line cars 157, 169, and 175 are heading southbound on the Sixth Street Viaduct in Milwaukee on April 19, 1959.

There are not many color photos showing this prewar paint scheme, seen here on North Shore Line coach 739 at the Milwaukee Terminal on June 25, 1942.

North Shore Line coach 173 is at the Mundelein Terminal in November 1962, just two months before the end of service. Car 160, now at the Illinois Railway Museum, is at right on a storage track. (Walter Schopp Photo)

After the North Shore Line abandonment, car 727 went to the Southern Iowa Railway. Here it is shown on June 14, 1964, next to Waterloo, Cedar Falls, and Northern car 100. Within a few years, both cars ended up on the Iowa Terminal Railroad (now the Iowa Traction Railway), but unfortunately, car 100 was destroyed in a 1967 fire. 727 is still operable.

Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee #607 is at North Chicago Junction on November 16, 1941. “The ‘Big Hook’ operating as a loco, hauling a 12 car drag and caboose.” The color is described as orange and black. (Vic Wagner Photo)

North Shore Line city streetcar 359, a 1920s product of the St. Louis Car Company, is shown at North Chicago Junction on March 2, 1941. This was the south end of the line for Waukegan streetcars. (Vic Wagner Photo)

North Shore Line Silverliner 771 at the Milwaukee Terinal.

A three car Chicago and Milwaukee Electric (predecessor of the North shore Line) express train, made up of woods including car 401, from an early colorized postcard. The location here may be Lake Forest. Dons Rail Photos (via Archive.org): “401 was built by Jewett Car in 1909 as parlor-buffet car. In 1917 it was converted to straight coach and retired in 1935. It was leased to Chicago Aurora & Elgin and renumbered 142 in 1936. It came back for a short time with the CA&E number in 1945 and sold to CA&E in 1946. It was retired in 1953.”

As the song goes, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot at the former site of the North shore Line’s Milwaukee Terminal, seen here on August 24, 1966. The former switchman’s shanty was the only thing carried over. (Richard H. Young Photo)

On June 6, 1954, the National Railway Historical Society held a farewell fantrip on the Red Arrow interurban line to West Chester, PA. Here, the fantrip cars are stopped at the West Chester Water Works. Car 66 was built by Brill in 1926 and was declared surplus in 1970, after Red Arrow was taken over by SEPTA. It is now at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA.

Fairmount Park Transit car 10, built by Brill in 1896, as it appeared on April 6, 1946, not long before the line was abandoned. There are not many color photos of this operation. (David H. Cope Photo)

Fairmount Park Transit was an interesting streetcar operation that ran from 1896 to 1946, all on the grounds of a public park in Philadelphia, completely separate from the rest of the local streetcar system. Here we see car #1.