Retro Louisville: When the city's streetcars stopped running

On Page 18 of the May 2, 1948 edition of the Courier Journal, near the bottom of column six between a small article titled "State Seeks Bids To Repair Streets In Louisville" and an even smaller article titled “Man Smoking In Bed Held”, was this brief two-paragraph, three-sentence mention:

“Clang Goes the Trolley For the Last Time:

The last streetcar to operate in Louisville pulled into the Queen Street loop at 6 'clock last night to join others there until they are moved to storage points.

Busses replaced trolleys on the Fourth Street line, leaving Louisville without street railways for the first time since 1844, when horse-drawn cars first ran over rails here. Electric cars took over in 1889.”

And, after 104 years, the era of Louisville streetcars came to a quiet, unceremoniously end. Once the primary city mode of transportation, streetcars are now remembered in fond recollections by most who never rode such a vehicle except perhaps on a visit to New Orleans or San Francisco where they are primarily tourist attractions.

Louisvillians began desiring automobiles over streetcars in the early 1900s after the first motorized carriage appeared on city streets Oct. 4, 1898. Courier Journal reporter Paul Hughes wrote a four-page epitaph on the streetcar system in the Sunday Magazine. April 25, 1948.

Hughes noted that "in 1920, there were more than 400 streetcars. By 1948, there were only 44 'creaky' trolleys." Their age was 28 years old or older.

"Since about 1920, no new streetcars were purchased." Hughes wrote. "In that time, however, the railway company bought 270 gasoline busses, 127 Diesel busses and 60 trolley coaches to run on 175 miles of transit routes in the city and suburbs. In that same period, the streetcar system gradually dwindled from its one-time 125 miles of single track until just over 10 miles of track (remained), including siding, spurs, and yards."

The first line in 1844, was steam-powered that connected downtown Louisville to Portland, three miles away, and ferried steamboat freight and passengers past the Falls. Before the electrification of the system in 1889, the cars were pulled by mules. There were 2,150 mules at that time. Mule-drawn cars ended in 1901.

Descendants of E. I. du Pont, Alfred and Antoine Bidermann du Pont relocated here from Wilmington, Deleware, in the 1850s and created a network of streetcar lines both here and throughout the Midwest. "Fontaine Fox, the cartoonist and a one-time Louisvillian, got the idea for his 'Toonerville Trolley' from the old Brook Street line," per Hughes.

While romantic to some, streetcars were noisy, old, faulty, and didn’t keep to their schedule very often.  The system was due a modern upgrade with newer cars in 1929, but the stock market crash ended that overhaul.

While gasoline and diesel-powered busses were now the main public transportation, the city was planning on maintaining the north-south Fourth Street line operational after 1948.  But, per Hughes, a "hubbub set in, and after a sort of plebiscite, in which the public indicated it wanted rubber instead of steel" wheels, a recent order of streetcars "were swapped to Cleveland for new diesel busses."

Hughes concluded the following was the ultimate reason to end Louisville’s streetcar system on Derby Day, May 1, 1948: "If a coroner's jury ever sits over their demise, it will have to call them the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning: the exhaust fumes of automobiles and busses."

Steve Wiser, FAIA, is a historian, author, and architect