It wasn’t unusual for one company to operate both interurban lines and street cars or trolleys. Both were powered with electricity, so it was also possible that they might be a city’s source of electricity. And in order to compensate for lighter passenger traffic on weekends, these privately-owned stock companies sometimes operated amusement parks at the end-of-the-line, in addition to serving cemeteries.

With so many companies nationwide, serving communities of even modest size, there were several car manufacturers, eager to innovate during the interwar expansion period. It wasn’t at all unusual for one company to purchase the hand-me-down stock from another undergoing an upgrade. I direct you the the book by Messrs Hilton & Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America, which may yet be in print. The internet is awash in nostalgic black-and-white images, however, to give you a sense of their size and style.

These three images are typical of the smaller (and earlier) cars used on city streets. Their windows opened for summer heat — notice the grill to keep hands safely inside — while some services used cars there were hybrid or completely open. Access was often clumsy, particularly in eras when women wore full skirts; one solution to this problem was the center-entry car that actually dipped in the center and required only a step or two from the pavement — if there was any, that is.

This last example (above) is also larger and heavier, the sort that could be suitable for inter-city service, the above-mentioned “interurban.” Notice how high the car is above grade on this Lake Shore Electric Railway car (below) that ran the one hundred and twenty miles from Toledo to Cleveland.

The Agincourt Street Railway and the NITC are likely to have at least a couple in each of these categories. The trick is being historically accurate.

Railway Station for Banff National Park (unbuilt) / Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

The temporary NITC shelter at the Commons will be basic: tickets are available from an array of vendors (druggist, news stands, etc.), so essentially it will be a glorified comfort station. And once the actual depot is complete, one block south at Broad and Louisa, it can be recycled as a public facility on the Commons itself.

Since it will serve the company for less than a year, heating is necessary to keep the pipes from freezing. Passenger comfort is important but they will be in the building for only short periods. Provision for four-season use, however, is a consideration for its future service, both as a comfort station (in the Edwardian sense of what that should be) and as a warming house for winter sports like ice skating.

What do I mean by “Edwardian” standards? Women and young girls and children expected the privacy that a “Women’s Waiting” room afforded, both for hygiene and the discretion of nursing infants. I can recall riding on Chicago busses with my mother in 1951 and 1952 and seeing women openly nurse their babes without hesitation (or, presumably, embarrassment). There was also an expectation that it was men who smoked, more often pipes and cigars, rather than cigarettes (and those were likely the roll-your-own sort). So a M/W binary scheme makes sense.

C&NW suburban station, Glencoe, IL / Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

Wright designed a suburban depot for Glencoe along the C&NW North Shore service; a bit too basic for my purposes. By the same token, his shelter at Banff Provincial Park is too grandiose.

Pavillion, Banff National Park, Banff, AB / Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

A median needn’t be a half measure.

Can anyone delineate the distinctions between depression, dejection, despondency, and despair?

Iowa is rich in the number of Prairie School buildings that once stood there. Louis Sullivan contributed five of them, though technically, “Sullivanesque” isn’t interchangeable with the low-slung ground-hugging style of Wright and a few of his cronies. But the full list of contributors is impressive, nonetheless:

• Frank Lloyd Wright, of course (the now restored hotel and bank in Mason City, as well as the Stockman house)
• Louis Sullivan (banks in Algona, Grinnell, and Cedar Rapids, where there is also a church; and a department store in Clinton on the Mississippi)
• a long-demolished (1971) house in Des Moines by Arthur Huen, of whom you’ve never heard
• multiple houses in Mason City by both Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin, and William Drummond
• and others; by George W. Maher (Waukon)
• Hugh M. G. Garden’s Christian Science church in Marshalltown
• William L. Steele’s work in Sioux City and vicinity, some of it done with P&E
• and a host of other first-, second-, and third-string architects and builders inspired by the Prairie School; even the “back bench boys” are pretty good
• not to mention the likes of Lawrence Buck, whose work (in Cedar Rapids and Dubuque) is more Arts & Crafts than blatant P.S.

For a full list, you ought to visit the Prairie School Traveler’s website. It was this wealth of material that encouraged me to put my Sullivan knock-off in Iowa.

In the 2007 exhibit there was a spectacularly successful transit station in the Prairie idiom, circa 1910, but documentation of that project has long since disappeared and the student’s name has faded from memory (with the hope that someone will refresh it). I’m thinking of that today as I feel the need to put the stamp of early FLlW on the community — not that Wright is any easier to ape than Sullivan.

NITC

The Northwest Iowa Transit Company’s terminal at Broad and Louisa might be remade in the P.S. idiom; the plan is already half-way there. And that would make the other transit facilities easier to integrate into the story: a temporary shelter on the Commons, which served until the main depot was complete, and the now-lost “Industry” stop on the southwest loop of the figure-eight.

Peter Stohr Arcade, Wilson Avenue “L” Station, Chicago, IL (1909) / Frank Lloyd Wright

You may be surprised to know that Wright himself designed transit stations in the Oak Park period: small stations along the North Shore, and the Arcade for Peter Stohr, which served for a few years as the Wilson Avenue “L” stop on Chicago’s farther north side. It seems to me that the Stohr building, the river Forest Tennis club, and the Yahara Boat Club project are all the background anyone might require.

Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

There was a call a couple of nights ago from the District 21 leadership hereabouts, wondering if either of us would like to throw our hat in the ring for election to public office. When I stopped laughing and politely begged off, we thought a bit more about the nature of elective office: how one attains it, how one keeps it, and why anyone would put themselves through that wringer.¹

Thus far, I’ve sketched the lives of two public servants in Agincourt — Sheriff Joe Pyne (the anti-Arpaio), a character from the Depression era and the sort of person who made a distinction betwixt justice and the law, and somewhat earlier, Hizzoner, half-term major in the 1890s Edmund FitzGerald Flynn. It’s not accidental that Flynn is named for a sunken ore boat at the bottom of Lake Superior.

From the time of its incorporation in 1857 to the present, Agincourt may have gone through several different forms of municipal government, depending on the provisions of the Iowa constitution. I spent much of my youth in Illinois, living in a village (an acceptable form in that state), which has a president, rather than a mayor, and six village trustees. Cities have mayors and city councils and there are various ways those councils can be structured and their members elected. Does anyone take “Civics” in high school anymore? Or am I wasting my breath? Not having checked Iowa’s enabling legislation, we’ve assumed a form of city government with mayor and council.

Suffrage is, of course, an interesting topic throughout the 19th century: the gradual attainment of voting rights for Blacks and eventually for women are two of the watershed moments in our country’s history. But those dates in Agincourt’s chronology will be easy to pinpoint. The other messier aspect of candidacy and electioneering are another matter. For the time being, check out the stories of Mayor Flynn and Sheriff Pyne as representations of political polarities.

¹ According to Roy, my dad, there were only two types of politicians: 1) those entering the arena, who are bound to become corrupt, and 2) those already in the arena and corrupted beyond redemption. Dad had a pretty negative view of politics. Each time the voting cycle rolled around, he’d say, “Well, time to get out the ‘Vote No’ pencil.”

This is what Mr Roy Moore should say:

To my Accusers and other Citizens of the Great State of Alabama:

Each of the charges brought against me in recent days by multiple women is accurate and true. I once used my physical strength and position of authority as leverage to gain sexual satisfaction. Those actionable impositions of power over these innocent women are reprehensible. The very human figure who committed them, however, died on __________ <insert date here> when I accepted the redemption of Jesus Christ as my Saviour; when I should also have sought the forgiveness of all those I had wronged, especially these young women, some of them children at the time.

I have improperly used titles of position and authority to achieve power and gratification unworthy of someone Born Again. Today, publicly, I again seek God’s infinite forgiveness and, for the first time, the forgiveness of my accusers. I am willing and anxious to face them and hear their heartfelt expressions of the grievous harm I inflicted so many years ago.

To remove the burden of evaluating the authenticity of this profound apology and expression of faith in the Living God, I now remove my candidacy for election to the United States Senate. Because the vicissitudes of Alabama law will not permit removal of my name from the ballot, if elected I will not serve.

With profound apologies for the damage I have wrought, I ask forgiveness from you all.

Humbly,

Roy Moore

This is what Roy Moore should say but is constitutionally unable to.

And these are the two reasons why Roy Moore is unfit for public office: #1) because these accusations are true and accurate statements of his actions so many years ago; and #2) because he has continued to use titles of office and, more significantly, expressions of religious faith as a shield, to maintain positions of power and authority; because his proud, nearly theatrical professions of the Christian faith are a sham, a costume worn for personal gain.

[#989]

All the hubbub swirling about a certain Mr Moore — his insistence on the use of a previous title may add unearned luster to the man, but it tarnishes the title — has reminded me of another with only a slightly different name, Sir Thomas More, of Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons.” It’s been too long since I last watched Paul Scofield’s Academy Award-winning portrayal of More in the 1966 film version.

We are, or at least have been, a Nation of Laws, and there seem to me to be too many playing fast and loose with the law these days — from the Oval and the A.G.’s offices on down. Playwright Bolt puts some mighty words into Sir Thomas’s mouth, well worth reading again until I can see the film:

William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
— Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons”

The legal profession is represented in Agincourt today by at least one firm: Cable+Coomaraswamy+Bell. They (or one of their antecedent incarnations) bought the old Public Library in the mid-70s when it moved to the building on East Louisa near the Catholic church. And I’ve been anxious to explore their role in community affairs and, of course, how someone with a Sri Lankan name came to live among us.

Oh and, by the way, we might do well to note the last words of the film and imagine some substitution of characters:

Thomas More’s head stood on Traitor’s Gate for a month until his daughter Meg claimed it in order to give her father a proper funeral. Thomas Cromwell was beheaded five years after More was. Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake. The Duke of Norfolk was slated for execution but the King died of syphilis the night before the order was scheduled to be signed. Richard Rich became Lord Chancellor of England and died in his bed.

From the 1890s until World War II, there was a type of rail transport in the U.S. between the regional rails (like the Santa Fe or the Chicago Northwestern) and the common streetcar (which served communities of all sizes but tended to have a limited service area; these were for going to work or the market or to school). That intermediate level was known as an inter-urban, usually spelled without the hyphen.

Interurbans were the “light rail” systems of their day, often connecting a series of small hamlets with miles of track through open countryside. Whole networks of them grew, some in competition, but most interconnected like legs of a relay race. It was possible, for example, to travel from Chicago to New York on interurbans — but I wouldn’t recommend it: it would have taken days and involved transfers between more than a dozen different lines.

The greatest concentration of interurban service was in the Midwest — the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois — but they existed everywhere, even in remote parts of the southwest and mountain regions. Pacific Electric served Southern California during 1901-1961 and grew to more than 1,000 miles of track that extended from San Fernando to Newport Beach and as far east as Redlands. In the 1920s, it was the largest electric railway system in the world; sadly, now most of its routes are freeways and its cars have become artificial reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Go figure. Wanna bet that L.A. would like to have it back?

The finest and still most reliable source on interurban history, generally and company-by-company, is The Electric Interurban Railways of America by Messrs Hilton & Due (possibly in print, but my copy is old and dogeared, if you want to use it). In fact, it was H&D’s style that allowed me to write an entry for Agincourt’s own: the Northwest Iowa Traction Co., popularly called the NITC (pronounced “nitch”), founded in 1909 but gone by the WWII years.

It was also natural for the NITC to have spun off a trolley line for the city itself, a one-way track making a weird figure-eight from the depot at Broad and Louisa through most of the neighborhoods. A spur line served the cemeteries (for deliveries and the occasional well-attended burial) and another seasonal track branched off toward the fairgrounds on the west bank of the Mighty Muskrat.

There are literally thousands of postcard views of interurbans: of the cars in every possible situation (including wrecked), of the stations that often served as their hub (some of them pretty goofy), and of the conductors and engineers who ran them, proudly decked out in their uniforms.

My goal has always been to create a full corporate image — tickets, tokens, schedules, maps, advertising (posters and newspaper adverts) — something which has so far eluded me. Thought I had some volunteers but that fell through for lack of interest.

PS: If you’d like to know what happened to all those interurban miles of track, it was a conspiracy among John D. Rockefeller (oil), Henry Ford (automobiles), and Frank Seiberling (founder of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.), a story being played out again in The New Oligarchy.