I enjoyed looking closely at this photo to try to find all the open carbon arc lamps attached to building storefronts. This must have been a brilliantly lit street at night. Weird to think someone had to climb up to each lamp once a day to change the rods. Early open arc lamps like these required daily replacement of the carbon electrodes to keep them lit.

It is interesting that they chose to light the street from the storefronts rather than use lamp posts or pendent lamps hanging over the street. I can imagine that people were attracted by the lamps to the storefronts at night like bugs to a porch light.

[The carbons in the "enclosed" luminaires seen here generally lasted 90 to 150 hours, and so would not need to be changed daily. - Dave]

According to kchistory.org, when the station opened, critics couldn't figure out the architectural style because it included French chateau, Gothic and Victorian aspects, with steeples, towers, turrets, arches, cupolas and a 125-foot tall clock tower. It was referred to as "sprawling monstrosity" or "Kansas City's Insane Asylum", in reference to the builder, who had just built a mental hospital in Topeka.

If you could not afford to buy a ticket at the depot, and didn't want to ride a side-door Pullman, you went to a ticket broker. You likely would get a better price, but that came with a slow roundabout routing via several railroads. You could beat the lowest direct price between New York and Chicago by buying a set of low-priced tickets via some regional railroads. You might have to loop around the country to get your price. This would including sleeping on a non-reclining coach seat on an all-night, all-stops mail train or two.

For their part, ticket brokers bought and held discounted tickets and tickets good for so many miles on some carriers. Lots of shady deals were made with small railroads trying to siphon off a few fares from the New York Central or Pennsylvania. And creative brokers figured these things out so that it looked like you went to Kansas City from Chicago on your way to Pittsburgh. One could write a book about this era, when price and time had a very different relationship.

I spot at least a half dozen ticket brokers across the street from the station; clearly this was a big business at the time. But how did the business work? Surely there couldn't be that many individuals with unused railroad tickets that they needed to cash in. So where did these brokers get their inventory? Did the railroad companies sell bulk tickets at discounted rates to the brokers?

I'm surprised to see Pabst make inroads in Budweiser's home state. I was going to make a throwaway remark about Pabst not getting its blue ribbon yet, and that sent me down a rabbit hole. Here's what I learned:

1. The Best family founded the original Empire brewery. Two of the Best kids broke off to start their own brewery. That eventually became Miller Brewing.

2. Pabst got its name when Capt. Pabst became the sole owner. Pabst was a Great Lakes boat captain until his ship was wrecked. He married into the Best family, and used his shipwreck insurance money to invest in the brewery. Eventually, he was the sole owner, so he changed the name.

3. Pabst claimed they got their blue ribbon at Chicago's World Columbian Exposition in 1893. In fact, they were already tying a blue ribbon to their beer long before the exposition. They started using it in their advertising, but as we see in the photo, not every sign had the blue ribbon until the 1930s. There was enough controversy about their claim that they eventually changed their website to say only that they received awards at multiple competitions.

Albany, New England, Milwaukee, Klondike.

It's like I got hit on the head during a twister and woke up confused, and seeing black and white, on Union Avenue or something.