06/08/2026
🏛️ A Trolley, a Family, and the Broadway Building, Downtown Lorain 1930s.
😍 What a wonderful photograph this is. Taken from West Erie Avenue, facing east toward Broadway, this image captures a quiet, everyday moment in 1930s Lorain. Look closely at the scene:
🚃 A trolley on West Erie heads west, likely one of the electric streetcars of the Lorain Street Railway, which connected neighborhoods and nearby towns for decades.
👨👩👧👦 Cars parked and a family crosses the street, mother, father, and child. Just ordinary people going about their daily lives, unaware that nearly a century later, we would be looking back at them.
🏛️ And there, rising in the background, stands the Broadway Building, perhaps a decade old by the time this photo was taken. Its Beaux‑Arts facade anchors the southeast corner of the intersection, just as it does today what a moment frozen in time.
🤔 Why this image matters, 100 years later: The Broadway Building opened in 1926, a gleaming new mixed‑use marvel with a bowling alley, upscale restaurant, doctors' offices, and government agencies. It survived the Great Depression, the decline of the streetcars, the rise of the automobile, and even a period of heartbreaking neglect in the 2000s.
🕰️ Today, that trolley is long gone. Those cars have been replaced by newer models. That family has likely passed into memory. But the Broadway Building still stands, now the Ariel Broadway Hotel, celebrating 100 years at the same corner where a streetcar once rolled past a family crossing the street.
👇 Do you recognize this view? Have you ever spotted yourself or a relative in old photos of the Loop? Share your stories below.
📸 (Photo: Doane Collection, Lorain Public Library System. Circa 1930s. Photographer unknown.)
