š What a Tram Pass Can Tell You About a City
I love public transportation.
DC has a strong network of buses and metro, and that was one of the reasons we ended up moving here ā I'm not interested in owning a car. As imperfect and sometimes frustrating as it may be, public transit speaks volumes about a city. It is, at the end, its nervous system.
It was then with big surprise that I found a collection of tram passes at the People's Archive at the MLK Library last fall. Today I want to share a few of them with you. (I remember there's a similar collection at the DC History Center archives too, if you're curious.)
These are weekly passes from the Capital Transit Company, and they range from 1940 to 1958. They contain not only delightful details and striking colors, but also important historical testaments of a society and its values. Here are a few of my favorites ā though of course, this is only a small portion of the great designs that decorated everyone's wallets during that time.
Some are holiday-inspired:
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Others refer to the network of transportation itself:
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Others rely on heavy (and racist) propaganda tropes:
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The big numbers represent the week of the year they are valid for. Some of the lettering is fantastic:
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And the layout and color combinations make them small masterpieces of graphic art:
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A few of them have local references, and those are my favorites:
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And a few more:
