MILKWAGON AND OLD HOUSES
8-10 Grove Street
JUNE 18, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 134

Abbott's streetscapes often included horse-drawn wagons, relics of an earlier age. In this Grove Street photograph, taken the same day as several others near her Commerce Street studio, a horse-drawn wagon is her central subject.

Milk distribution in New York City, dominated by two giant companies--Sheffield Farms and Borden Company--was a unionized, government regulated, modern industry delivering three million quarts of milk and one million quarts of cream daily. Two-thirds of the total was delivered by truck to retailers and institutions, and one-third was delivered door-to-door by horses, who knew their routes, while "routemen" walked back and forth from house to wagon with empty bottles and new orders. After 9 A.M., when milkwagons were in use only to collect payments, they were required to employ "drag-chains"--as seen in Abbott's photograph--to prevent runaways.

In 1938, Sheffield Farms opened a $2.5 million plant at 57th Street and Eleventh Avenue, which received milk directly by rail and processed 24,000 quarts an hour. The 28th Street depot--whose address is posted on the wagon in Abbott's photograph--was closed, and motorized vehicles replaced the horse-drawn wagons.

The Grove Street houses behind the milkwagon were built in the 1820s and remain largely unmodified.

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