Description: Sometime in 1902-04, Lucy Sampson set her camera looking east on the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike at the “Pike’s” intersection with Waterloo Avenue. The Cassatt Avenue bridge on the left crosses the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks to its intersection with the ‘Pike,’ with a bit of the Berwyn station behind. In the center of the image is a two-story building with the name “Central Cigars and Tobacco Emporium.” The spiral pole alongside the structure denotes its additional use as a barbershop. (Within four years of this image the ‘Emporium’ would be razed and replaced by the stone W.T. Yerkes Building A wagon in front notates its use for cigar deliveries and advertising. Along the road are three young men playing touch football and “mugging” for the camera. Along the roadside is a vertical pole which has, at its base, what is believed to be the original mile marker 16 … 16 miles from P … of the Lancaster Turnpike dating back to 1792. East of the station can be easily seen the Fritz Yard, owned by William H. Fritz, clearly advertising the sale of lumber, coal, grain and feeds. The very tall poles with horizontal bars and sets of insulators would be telegraph poles running along the main line, whereas on the smaller poles on the south side of the Pike with only a single crossbar were most probably telephone lines. - Herb Fry and Roger Thorne
