Mount Vernon’s North Main Street was buried in snow in 1910

MOUNT VERNON — Happily, this is not the weather event we’re having this weekend.

February 18, 1910, found Mount Vernon and surrounding communities digging out from a large snow event. This photo, courtesy of the Knox Time Collection, was snapped on North Main Street, just north of Public Square.

Many of the buildings remain today, particularly on the left (west) side of the street.

Also happily, I may now be able to better fill in the blanks on photos like this because I discovered that Kent State University has scans of Ohio’s Sanborn Maps available for researchers.

Sanborn Maps were detailed maps that were maintained for many years by insurance companies and fire departments.

For insurance purposes, these maps were maintained of all the cities in the United States so that insurance companies could have an idea what kind of operations and neighborhood any given business was in.

The maps show the type of business, and sometimes the name. More importantly for the fire departments who also used them, it showed the layout of rooms in the building (at least on the first floor) and how many exits were in each room.

Looking at the left side of the picture, we see—as indicated on the map — a fire hydrant on the corner, on this occasion barely sticking out of the snow drift.

The first shop on the left, which has no sign, was a grocery store in 1907, and so presumably would still have been so in 1910.

The next shop is identified as a plumbing store, and its sign, though at an angle, appears to confirm this: “Arthur A. Graham Plumbing, Heating & Gas Fitting.”

The next shop, with a projecting window well, is identified by name on the map as Gem Laundry, and notes that the building contains an electric motor, useful information for the fire department.

That flat store front just past the first protruding window was a doctor’s office. The next window well marks the location of a store marked on the map as “Milly,” almost certainly an abbreviation for “millinery,” which is an old-fashioned word for a shop that sold dresses and other clothes for women.

Beyond that was an office, and the northwest corner of the block—with a corner entrance then and now—was a barber shop.

Returning to the square and going up the right (east) side of North Main, the upholstering business on the corner has some faint lettering on a tiny awning that gives (I think) the name A. Stauffer, plus up on the second floor is a small sign for a Dr. Scott.

The building with the window well was an undertaker’s operation. Proof that businesses come and go is found at the next storefront, which in 1907 was an electrical supply store.

By 1910, its sign indicates that it is now C. E. Sharp’s florist shop. The next store, with its large sign, is the Oil Well Supply Co., marked as such on the Sanborn Map.

North of it is another grocery, whose sign can just barely be made out: Teeter the Grocer. Beyond that were a meat market and drug store, though no signs can be seen.

None of the people in the picture are identified. There are at least seven of them (and possibly as many as ten), plus six horses. (Side note: I started with two horses, then found more every time I looked at the picture again.)

There are two people in the horse-drawn sleigh proceeding up the street. Two more horses are attached to a sleigh parked on the east side of the street, but the people must be inside one of the stores, for as far as I can tell, the sleigh is empty.

A single gray or bay horse is hitched there, as well, next to one of the two men seen walking up the sidewalk.

A dark horse can just barely be seen behind a snowbank and under the American flag on the west side of the street.

Three women gleefully pose in the street for the photographer, up to their ankles in snow. It may be store packages that they are carrying.

There are three possible figures that I can’t rule in or out. One is past the eastern corner of the block, beyond the man who may be hitching the bay horse.

This spot looks like it might be a shadowy figure silhouetted against the house across East Chestnut. He could be that out-of-focus if he was moving faster than the camera could pick up.

There just may be another walker, further up that second block on the right side of the street, beyond the other American flag in the photo.

And if you look across the street to the left side, but a little bit closer, there may also be a dark person standing there, carrying a white bag at their side. Or maybe that’s just a tree with a patch of snow on it.

Last but not least, if my eyes don’t deceive me, there are a few tiny details that are just barely discernable.

The sleigh in motion is going through the intersection of North Main and Chestnut Street.

But if you look up in the air over the intersection, there appears to be an object there. I believe this is one of Mount Vernon’s early traffic lights. If you look in the distance, up the road, right about where Sugar Street would cross, I think there is another traffic light there.

Under this light, further up the road appears to be another dark object, perhaps a horse drawn sleigh retreating into the hazy distance.

If that is, indeed, another sleigh, that probably brings our horse total up to eight.

The one detail I can’t resolve is what exactly is hanging in the upstairs window over the Gem Laundry. Is it a decorative cross? A heart? Or does it actually have words on it?

It’s impossible to make it out for sure, and ultimately not important, though it is fun to study pictures like this for a quick glimpse into the life of another time, bringing the past a little closer.

But they can keep their snowdrifts.