Kevin McCarthy (Mitch) and Deborah Coconis (Blanche) are shown in a scene from 'A Streetcar Named Desire.'
Say the word "streetcar" and you might inspire visions of American cities around the turn of the century.
Once drawn by horses, later powered by electricity, streetcars were a means of getting from here to there. But these clanging and rumbling modes of transport remain today a romantic icon of simpler times.
"Electric streetcars added a dynamic change to Americans' sense of time and space in their daily lives," according to the National Museum of American History. "Between 1880 and World War I, many American cities adopted newly devised electric streetcar systems. The electric streetcar ...