Sure you do!
The Museum of Modern Art is featuring an exhibit through July 14th regarding this topic and they have unearthed an absolutely fascinating film taken of New York City at that time by a Swedish (!) company that devoted itself to filming interesting places.
The film runs just shy of 8 minutes long and can be seen here:
Not only is the restoration of the film fantastic, but you have to love the casual nature of the film itself. For example, I love how at just a little past the 7 minute mark we have extended (well, it lasts about 20 or so seconds) footage from the rear of a vehicle and watch as what looks like a wealthy family with their African American chauffeur head down the street.
It is so amusing to see the young daughter, seated uncomfortably in the front, looking absolutely bored out of her freaking mind. And then you see the chauffeur pointing to the camera and smiling as he realizes what’s going on. Such universal, human reactions.
Anyway, here’s a screen grab of the family and their car, full filmed image:
And below is a close up of the moment the driver first notices they’re being filmed. A moment after this particular frame he turns to the man beside him (I’m guessing the husband and head of this family) and points out what he’s seen. The girl remains totally bored out of her mind, though she too appears to notice the camera at this moment as well as her (I’m assuming) brother in the back seat:
Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
Someone noticed that in some of the street footage you see people with missing limbs wandering about. The person who noticed this wondered if these people were Civil War veterans.
That’s very possible. The Civil War ended in 1865 so if you were, say, 17 years old during the war and lost a limb in the fighting toward its end, you would be approximately 63 years old at the time this footage was shot.
Back in the late 1980’s I was often in the presence of the elderly (how I got to know them is a story for another day), some of whom were in their mid to late 80’s at that time and therefore were likely small children not unlike the youngsters in the car above in 1911.
Anyway, one of them told me when he was very young he recalled seeing amputees on the streets of New York usually begging for money. He said many of them were indeed Civil War veterans who had sustained their injuries during the war.
He noted that as he grew up in NY these people gradually disappeared, no doubt because -let’s be blunt here- they aged and eventually passed away.
Still, an interesting verification of a story told to me about 30 years ago by this individual!
Anyway, if you’re at all interested in seeing the rest of the footage, please check out the link!