As we approach a new century and a new millennium, we should consider how people in American communities dreamed about and participated in the coming of the twentieth century 100 years ago. The focus of this work is Evansville––100 years ago the only emerging metropolis between Louisville and St. Louis, and then, as now, the radial center of a hinterland stretching in all directions from 75 to 125 miles. The book illustrates how the city landscape changed because of the early industrial era, how people made a living, how people related toeach other, and how they spent their leisure time. About one-fifth of the images in this collection focus on the residents of the Evansville region; the Tri-State of southwestern Indiana, western Kentucky, and southern Illinois, which has been Evansville'sservice area since the 1850s.
Many of the photographs featured are from the Special Collections Department of Rice Library at the University of Southern Indiana and were made during the period from 1898 to 1905. Of the remaining photographs, none predates 1889 or is newer than 1911. So we have a clearly defined slice of time––the end of the Victorian age and the beginning of the twentieth century––in a distinctive place in America, the only large city (and its hinterland) on the lower Ohio.