Wheelchairs Across the Commons
Posted by Penny in Across The Commons, Articles| When she was photographed here, Mrs. Field was using a wicker wheelchair, pushed by the main standing behind her, apparently to tour the Bronx Zoo.
Was Mrs. Field a wheelchair user? |
 Library of Congress |
| The answer isn’t obvious, because the zoo (like many zoos and other parks today) had wheelchairs for loan or rent.
Notice the same model lined up behind Mrs. Gibson in this photo. |
 Library of Congress |
| Was this a common choice for tourists a century ago? The Commons has some tantalizing evidence that it may have been.
Meet Madame Gardriol: |
 Bibliotheque de Toulouse |
| Another matron on holiday — this time, at a spa town in the Pyrenees. Her chair model is different, but again there’s a man pushing her and an umbrella handy for shade.
Two could be a coincidence … are there other telltale images in the Commons? Look at this one, from the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893: |
 Brooklyn Museum |
Flickr user Rob Ketcherside added a note marking the two people on the lower right of the photo, just below the pillars — that’s a man pushing a woman in a wicker wheelchair.
Wicker was, indeed, a common material for wheelchairs in everyday use, not just by tourists. Wicker wheelchairs are sometimes sold today as antiques (not hard to find online), and well into the 1930s wicker was considered a stylish, comfortable design element.
Walking in heeled shoes, in a corset, in heavy skirts and layers, balancing an impressive hat, as women of the era did, was no easy trick; for some, it was simply impossible to sustain for long periods. If Mrs. Field, Mme. Gardriol, and the Exposition-goer wanted to see the sights and dress like their peers, and they could afford to hire a chair, wheels were one realistic option.
Who are the men behind the chairs? These models are built to be pushed by a second person (not self-propelled). Were the men hired with the chairs? Or were they family, friends, longtime employees?
Whether or not these women were using the chairs as a temporary convenience or an everyday necessity, the spaces they traveled might reasonably have accommodated such conveyances, especially if the zoo, spa, or fair provided the chairs in the first place. How well? Were the pathways were smooth, the entrances to indoor exhibits wide, and the inclines gentle? If so, maybe the history of wheelchair accessibility in public spaces extends further back than the familiar symbols and features of recent decades.
Tags: Bibliothèque de Toulouse, Brooklyn Museum, Library of Congress
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Two more images in the Commons that find wheelchairs at big events around 1900:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/2486863802/
(Brooklyn Museum, man pushing an empty wicker wheelchair is clearly visible in the foreground, at the Paris Exposition in 1900)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/2785065678/
(Brooklyn Museum again, another wicker wheelchair at the Columbian Exposition in 1893; this time, the wheelchair user looks like a man, and he seems to be parked outside the “Irish Village”–maybe not so accessible after all?)
March 31st, 2010 at 12:23 am
I believe that the conveyances offered (for a fee) to footsore members of the public at places like zoos and spas were called “rolling chairs” — a term intended to distinguish them from the medical variety: wheelchairs for the disabled.