WESTERN HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPT
COLLECTION-ST. LOUIS
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS
For a list of the images in this collection click here and go to the WHMC photograph database
The Queens Borough Public Library in Jamaica, New York donated forty-six negatives by Edward Minden to WHMC St. Louis. Minden lived in Patchogue, Long Island, and started taking photographs in the late 1930s.
Minden primarily was interested in the Long Island Railroad and the trolley and subway systems in Brooklyn and Queens. The Queens Borough Library received a number of Edward Minden photographs in the Ron Ziel Collection of Long Island Railroad Photographs. The photos Minden took of streetcars in St. Louis comprised part of that collection.
The forty streetcar negatives measure 116mm (2 ½”x 4 ¼”), a type of roll film used in Brownie cameras. The Minden photos also included six 120mm (2 ½” x 3 ¼”) negatives of an unidentified fire.
The photos date from the mid to late 1940s and show the cars running on the #22 Jefferson Avenue line. The streetcars shown in action are the PCC cars added to the Jefferson Avenue line in 1946, as well as the older “Peter Witt” cars making their way from the North Grand end of the line to the South Jefferson intersection with South Broadway. PCC Streetcars are shown coming out of the South Broadway Car House, a facility accessed by over seventy line cars until 1960. The Jefferson Avenue line closed in 1958.
In other photographs, streetcars and utility cars rest at the 39th and Park materials yard near the St. Louis Public Service Company’s (later Bi-State) offices and shops.
WESTERN HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION
222 THOMAS JEFFERSON LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS
ONE UNIVERSITY BOULEVARD
ST. LOUIS, MO 63121
(314) 516-5143
FAX: (314) 516-5853