For Sale, an Extremely Rare Look at Downtown When Horses and Streetcars Shared Main Street

I had been contemplating a host of assorted humdrum news items with which to begin this gray Friday when Friend of Unfair Park PeterK dropped in the in-box the photo you see above, taken from an E.W. Kelley stereograph presently up for grabs on eBay for the buy-it-now price of $195. That’s more like it. Given that’s the completed-in-1909, soon-to-be-demolished Praetorian on the right as we look west down Main Street, best guess is this is the modern-day equivalent (though, of course, much has changed since last Google cruised downtown). Ah, there’s George W. Loomis’s joint — one of several owned by the man who sold G.B. Dealey the land near what would become, ya know, Dealey Plaza. The eBay page has an even bigger, sharper look-see, and I’ve been staring into this photo for, oh, an hour? Jeez. Pardon the delay.