Main St., New Hartford 45.

Main St., New Hartford 45.

Streetscape with 19th century houses and shops, with parked early automobiles. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. This picture shows New Hartford's downtown as a mix of residential and commercial buildings. Here is a row of early and mid-19th century clapboard structures updated with Victorian porches and ornamental sawn filigree. While electric utility poles and lines convey modernization, the utility poles are first-generation, uncontoured tree trunks. A fountain, probably added in the 1880s or 90s as part of a civic beautification project, is visible at the distant corner at the intersction.