Susan's Blogue

City Hall on Taft Day

by Susan Taylor Block

I just ran across this wonderful old image in a 1982 Wilmington Printing Company calendar I saved. It depicts the downtown scene on November 9, 1909, the day President William Howard Taft visited Wilmington. There is much to see here. City Hall is bedecked with flags and surrounded by a sea of onlookers dressed in their best clothes. A streetcar sits on the Princess Street rails, with vintage cars from President Taft’s motorcade nearby. And on the left, the cameraman caught a rare view of the North Carolina Sorosis building. A bit of bygone tree, old streetlamps, the clumsy power pole, a struggling palm, and this particular City Hall exterior treatment are frozen here by some fine photographer, shooting from an upstairs window on North Third Street.

This photo is part of the rich archive housed at the Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear.

To see more images of Taft Day, go to:   http://susantaylorblock.com/2010/07/03/taft-day/