Capital Streetcars

by John DeFerrari

  The poor horses were always the center of attention. They represented by far the street railway companies’ biggest investment, costing as much as $200 apiece, and were, of course, the vital engines that made the whole system work. Yet they were routinely subjected to abuse and were pushed to their limits even when they weren’t stuck in the mud. Across the country, horses typically lasted just three years pulling streetcars before they had to be retired.

  Horses could pull the cars at a top speed of about four to six miles per hours, just slightly faster than walking. When overloaded (as they frequently were) or facing an uphill grade, they would move much more slowly. If you were in a hurry, the ride could seem interminable. A trip across town, from Georgetown to Capitol Hill, for example, might take an hour. But unless you could afford a private hackney cab, no faster alternatives were available.

  Uniformed cadets from Alexandria transfer between a small Belt Line horsecar and a railroad car on Maryland Avenue, circa 1890. National Capital Trolley Museum.

  The greatest strain on the horses was in getting the car moving from a stop. Once it was in motion on the rails, it was relatively easy to keep moving. Of course, that offered little relief for the typical streetcar horse, given that the cars were constantly stopping and starting. Early D.C. streetcars would stop anywhere a passenger wanted to get on or off (fixed car stops were not established until 1918).

  A typical streetcar was drawn by two horses, although many smaller one-horse cars were also used. Horses would normally run for shifts of about three hours, necessitating the use of several pairs of horses for each car per day. Railway company stables across the city each kept hundreds of horses and were constantly buying new ones and retiring the “worn out” veterans. Streetcar companies originally favored heavy draft horses from Ohio, but eventually consensus was reached that Percherons, a French breed especially valued for their pulling power and stamina, made the best streetcar horses.27

  Managing a team of horses required skill and experience. First, the two horses had to be appropriately paired; if one pulled harder than the other, it would quickly tire and be overworked. Also, because horses tend to spook easily, care had to be taken to keep them calm amid the bustle of street traffic. “Nervous” horses needed special handling. Drivers would often keep them on the right side, away from traffic. A good driver knew just how to keep a firm hand on the reins so that the horses had a sense of being under control and still vary the pressure to give them commands. Too much pulling on the bit and reins could ruin a horse, and reckless use of a whip could cause it to panic. Abrupt stops, especially on slippery cobblestones, could cause horses to slip and fall. The essence of good horsecar driving was smooth, predictable movements.

  A Metropolitan horsecar and crew pose on Boundary Street (Florida Avenue) near Connecticut Avenue, circa 1892. National Capital Trolley Museum.

  An important skill was gauging the momentum of the car and knowing how to apply the brakes to assist the horses in stopping the car smoothly without causing them to trip. In the very first public demonstration of horse-drawn streetcars in New York City in 1832, an accident resulted from one driver’s inexperience. Two horsecars filled with dignitaries were headed down a section of track, the first driven by an experienced stagecoach driver and the second under the reins of a local hack man. When an official signaled the two cars to stop at the end of the run, the experienced driver gracefully brought his car to a clean stop. The driver behind him, however, tried unsuccessfully to stop his car simply by reining his horses. The car ended up crashing into the rear of the first vehicle. Nobody was hurt, but embarrassed officials quickly learned that they would need to thoroughly train their new drivers.

  The biggest challenges for horsecars were the hills, especially in muddy conditions. Generally, horse-drawn streetcar routes were designed to avoid hills. The horses simply did not have the power to carry the cars up them. The hilly areas of the northwest part of the District beyond Boundary Street were out of the question, for example. But a few hills were unavoidable, including two spots on the Washington & Georgetown line—at northbound Fifteenth Street alongside the Treasury Department and on B Street (now Constitution Avenue) by the Capitol. The company maintained dedicated “hill horses” for use at these two spots. The horses were kept at the bottom of the hills and were added to each car’s team to help pull the cars up the hill.

  Hill horse boys were in charge of this task. “They were hearty, noisy youngsters, the hill horse lads, and there was always a great bustle and stir and shouting and clanking of hooks and chains and so on in front when the hill horse boy tacked his quadruped onto the car,” an anonymous observer recalled in later years. Another commentator recalled how passengers could “hear the hill-horse boys’ loud greetings to the car drivers as they hitched on their nags to take the long, steep hills; could hear their ‘You Jim!’ and ‘G’long, yuh bum!’ addressed to the weary horses as the hard climbs were being made, accompanied by the cracking of the Hankmonkish blacksnake whips.” The grueling task was especially difficult in winter months:

  Very often, during these ascents, especially during the slippery times, one or other of the horses would fall down, and then all of the hill-horse boys, foregathering at the foot of the hill in blustery converse, would rush to the aid of the downed horse, so that the next car to come along to the foot of the hill would have to wait for the return of a hill-horse boy with his nag; and it was music to ears (a music of which there is no echo left now) to hear the hill-horse boy returning down the hill with the clanking of the chains of the horse and his rough repartee exchange with the impatient driver.28

  This was exceptionally grueling work, and abuse of the horses occurred regularly. As late as 1893, a certain Joseph Cochran, manager of hill horses for the Belt Railway, was hauled into court for making his animals work nine-hour stretches without being fed. He argued that the horses were fed three times a day and that for nine hours’ light work, they would not suffer. “If that’s light work,” the judge replied, “I don’t know what hard work is.” He fined Cochran ten dollars.29

  Going down a hill could be as dangerous as going up—maybe more so. Drivers needed to remember to apply the brakes. One day in 1881, young Florence L. Clark was riding west on the Washington & Georgetown line at Capitol Hill when “the driver detached the horses and walked them down the hill. The conductor was inside the vehicle [instead of being on the rear platform] and no one left at the brakes. In consequence the car obtained a great and dangerous velocity, and when it reached the abrupt curve at the end of the grade it partly overturned and threw [Clark] violently about, injuring her severely and possibly permanently,” according to the Washington Post. It was all part of the adventure of riding the city’s earliest streetcars.

  THE GREAT EPIZOOTIC OF 1872

  Another drawback of horse-drawn cars was disease, horses being subject to a variety of ailments that could affect their ability to pull cars. The most dramatic was the Great Epizootic of 1872 (an epizootic being an epidemic among animals), a type of influenza that affected horses much the way it attacks humans, producing coughing, runny noses, weakness, loss of appetite and so on. As the disease swept down and across the United States from Canada in the fall of 1872, almost every horse in the country was affected.

  The disease spread rapidly once it arrived in Washington. It had begun near Toronto in September and progressed south through New York, ravaging New York City horses in October. Beginning on Friday, November 1, dozens of horses in the sprawling stables of Washington streetcar companies started showing symptoms of the disease. Frantic stable hands rubbed affected horses with ammonia, linseed oil and turpentine, and they burned tar, leather and hayseed to “fumigate” the stables—all to little, if any, effect. By Saturday, twice as many horses were affected, and the companies began taking cars out of service. In a number of cases, “horses which started out this morning in apparent health were seized with [the disease] before going half a dozen squares, and had to be with
drawn.” Both the Washington & Georgetown and the Metropolitan lines announced that they would suspend all service on Sunday. The Metropolitan reported nearly all of its horses affected to some degree, and half of its cars were already off the road. By Sunday, virtually every horse in the city was sick.

  City streets on that Sunday were the quietest they’d been in years, with no streetcars and few other horse-drawn vehicles on the streets. For more than a week, the street railways were completely shut down. The resulting eerie absence of “the musical tinkle of the bells of street car horses” was disorienting to many. The fire department put out a public call for all citizens living near engine houses to help them in bringing firefighting equipment by hand to any fires, although none occurred during the peak of the epizootic.

  Finally, on Saturday the ninth, the Washington & Georgetown put a few cars back on the Pennsylvania Avenue line. “To the delight of foot-sore and leg-weary pedestrians, twelve street cars, each drawn by four horses, were put on the avenue line this morning, and of course they were well patronized,” the Evening Star reported. “The horses were not allowed to run more than one trip, and when taken from the cars did not seem to be any worse for the work.”

  Streetcars gradually returned to service the following week, although sporadically. Everyone waited anxiously for the plague to abate. “Persons living at the navy yard and in Georgetown, but whose business lies in the central portions of the city, have an enforced walk of several miles every morning and evening, some of them twice a day, and as may be supposed, are considerably disgusted at the tenacious manner in which the ‘hoss disease’ hangs on,” the Star observed. By the end of the second week, two-thirds of the city’s streetcars were operating, and the remaining cars returned to service soon thereafter. Although some of the horses succumbed, most survived to go back to their hard jobs of hauling Washingtonians up and down city streets.

  Exhausted and possibly sick horses attempt to pull a grossly overloaded streetcar in this illustration from Harper’s Magazine, September 21, 1872.

  Many people pitied the poor streetcar horses and the hard lives they lived. Concern about cruelty to streetcar horses led to the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866 in New York City. Although known today for its work with cats and dogs, the SPCA’s initial goal was to protect urban horses. SPCA officials were essentially deputized and took over the role of policing the streets for instances of cruelty and issuing fines or ordering overworked horses to be returned to their stables.

  The D.C. chapter of the society, formed in 1870, was poorly organized at first and had little impact. After it was “revived” in 1881, it became more of a force to reckon with. From its offices in the LeDroit Building opposite the Patent Office on F Street, the SPCA sent out its officers to patrol the streets of Washington. As veteran streetcar driver Montgomery Davis later recalled, the SPCA officers could be counted on for surprise inspections:

  We would be going along when a man in long gray whiskers would appear suddenly at our side, riding a bicycle…. He would order us to stop and would examine the horses. If he found the slightest sore underneath the braces, he would order the horse taken off and we’d have to wait until another horse was sent, pulling the car off the rails to let other cars by. Also, the company would be fined $5 for operating a horse with a sore neck.30

  The SPCA gave special attention to the plight of the hill horses, pressuring the Metropolitan Railroad to station more horses at the foot of Capitol Hill, belt them with warm blankets in cold weather and supply storm covers to protect them from rain and snow. Although street railway officials often served on the society’s board of directors, raising questions about the objectivity of its oversight, the SPCA unquestionably had a positive impact in the years that horses played such an essential role in Washington society.

  The advent of horse-powered streetcars in the nation’s capital had been long anticipated and brought the city its first significant mass transit system, easing the lives of many residents and opening the way for the town to grow once the Civil War had ended. But it was a rough-and-ready experience, much limited by the creatures that served stoically as its engines and suffered mightily for the convenience of their masters.

  Chapter 3

  CLOSE QUARTERS

  RIDING THE CARS, 1862–1888

  Nearly everyone who could afford the nickel fare rode the city’s streetcars in the late nineteenth century. This applied as much to the city’s successful and affluent upper-middle classes as to its struggling low-wage earners. Doctors and lawyers, senators and Supreme Court justices—they all rode the cars. “The greatest of the great ride in streetcars here,” Frank G. Carpenter, a correspondent for the Cleveland Leader, wrote in 1882. “It is not unusual to find yourself wedged in between a Senator whose oratory brings thousands out to hear him, and a General whose deeds will live in history as long as time lasts. Today your companion may be a noted lawyer; tomorrow you may hobnob and chat, if you will, with a member of the President’s Cabinet.”31 In effect, streetcars in Washington served as a grand social experiment, a bringing together of the city’s diverse strata as rarely happened under other circumstances.

  Congressmen and senators—who otherwise might seem oddly interested in a local issue like public transportation—were direct witnesses to the triumphs and trials of the city’s only transit system and became engrossed in the details of how it operated. It wasn’t uncommon for two members of Congress with oversight of District affairs to get into a passionate debate about the quality of D.C. streetcar service on the floor of the House or Senate—often after both had ridden the cars to the Capitol and been able to formulate their views from direct experience.

  Many federal officials sincerely enjoyed riding the cars and participating in their unique conventions. In the 1870s, stern-faced Supreme Court chief justice Morrison R. Waite (1816–1888) was a frequent and enthusiastic D.C. streetcar rider. He would invariably be found sitting up front next to the fare box, where he took pleasure in helping pass fares and tickets between fellow passengers and the car’s operator (more on that later).

  A one-horse car of the Metropolitan Railroad, at left, rounds the curve on F Street at Ninth Street in the 1880s. National Capital Trolley Museum.

  Even President Ulysses S. Grant was known to enjoy riding the streetcar down Pennsylvania Avenue. He would stand in front with the driver, chatting and smoking one of his imposing black cigars. Once he reached the Peace Monument at the foot of Capitol Hill, he would get off and walk back to the White House.32

  One of the most famous patrons of the city’s early cars was poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who, according to Whitman researcher Garrett Peck, was a frequent rider when he lived in the city during the Civil War and thoughtfully gave a set of gloves each year to the drivers he knew.33 Whitman struck up a particularly close relationship with a conductor named Peter Doyle in the war’s waning days. As Doyle later described it, Whitman had been dining with his friend John Burroughs on Capitol Hill and hopped on the Pennsylvania Avenue car late one night to head home:

  The night was very stormy,—he had been over to see Burroughs before he came down to take the car—the storm was awful. Walt had his blanket—it was thrown round his shoulders—he seemed like an old sea-captain. He was the only passenger, it was a lonely night, so I thought I would go in and talk to him [instead of remaining on the rear platform of the car, as was customary for conductors]…. We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip—in fact went all the way back with me. I think the year of this was 1866…34

  Born in Ireland, twenty-one-year-old Doyle had moved with his family to Virginia when he was eight years old. He had fought for the Confederacy as an artilleryman and been captured and imprisoned briefly in Washington. Whitman began spending much of his free time with Doyle, riding his streetcar back and forth from Georgetown to the Navy Yard. The sight of Whitman and Doyle together out on t
he platform became a familiar one on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “HARDLY FIT TO CARRY HOGS IN”

  While nearly everybody rode them, not everyone considered the cars a godsend. Many old-time Washingtonians disdained the strange new contraptions. Noah Brooks, an early chronicler of life in the city during the war, lampooned these detractors:

  The fine old aristocrats of the ancien régime looked upon these vehicles with great disfavor. They soon discovered that the “c’yar box,” as they called the street-car, would not come up to the sidewalk at the wave of a parasol or the beckoning of a hand, as had been the servile habit of the omnibuses, formerly the principal means of public conveyance in Washington streets. And it was a long time before these dignified sticklers for old manners and customs permitted themselves to enter the queer “Yankee contrivance” so lately introduced.35

  The corruption scandals of the post–Civil War era set a tone of cynicism about corporate tycoons, and the owners of the streetcar companies inevitably became prime objects of such resentment. Everyone believed that they were making a killing, and resentment only increased as the heavily used cars became worn and dirty and the poorly laid tracks grew rough.

  And why couldn’t there be more cars? Crowding would remain a perennial problem. During rush hour in the 1870s and 1880s, just as now, people were forced to pack themselves into the cars. Many thought this positively uncivilized, and some complained of the health dangers:

  How do we know that the man standing so near us that his breath is puffed in our faces may not have a dozen diseases more easily communicated by that means than any other; that the woman clinging to the strap over our heads, and brushing the whole length of her garments against us, may not have been discharged an hour ago from the small-pox hospital. We are the great unwashed who ride in the cars, and we ought to have all the air possible, whereas, under the present system we get none at all…36