by Shannon Butler The year is 1900, and you are sailing up the Hudson River on a dayliner steamship bound for Poughkeepsie. Perhaps you are on your way to one of the many schools to attend, or you wish to see a traveling play at one of the local theaters. The best way to make your way around the city as you step off the ship's docks was to hop on the Poughkeepsie-Wappingers Falls Trolley. The trolley system allowed for easy access to Vassar College, Wappingers Falls, and several different corners of Poughkeepsie (See map on the right). In the grand scheme of things, the trolley system didn’t last long (the bus system has been in operation longer at this point) but it still holds a bit of romanticism as a transit method of old. In 1892, the first mention of a trolley appeared in the Poughkeepsie Eagle News which read, “Keep still. Hold your breath. Poughkeepsie is going to have an electric street railroad - probably a trolley system.” The engineering firm of Lawlor and House built the system of rails and lines through the city in 1894, with crews moving fast enough to complete half a mile a day. [...]

by Shannon Butler Can you imagine a time in Poughkeepsie when you were more likely to see a horse and carriage go by than a car? That was the case at the turn of the 20th century. Buying an automobile was mostly reserved for the super wealthy, and even many of those individuals were reluctant to move onto the horseless carriage. However, by the early 1900s, a small group of Americans were interested in bringing the automobile to our town. Not just any car, but “The Master Car,” an Italian car, which would somehow be made into something distinctly American, The Fiat. In June of 1909, officials from the Fiat company were looking at property in Poughkeepsie to build their factory. The president of this American venture, Ben J. Eichberg, had been a diamond merchant and he had every intention of catering to the same sort of people who spent money on diamonds (the cheapest American Fiat ever listed was the 1914 Light Thirty at $3,600, that's about $92,000 today). The rest of the team was made up of men who knew a thing or two about cars, but they were certainly all American. “A royalty was paid to Fiat in [...]