27 Astonishing Vintage Photos of Car Wrecks in Boston in the 1930s - Old Us

   

Throughout the 1930s, the United States contended not only with the Great Depression but also with a nationwide panic surrounding traffic safety. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt penned a letter to state governors, imploring them to curtail “the increasing number of deaths and injuries” related to car crashes.

During the precarious decade, Leslie Jones of the Boston Herald-Traveler took hundreds upon hundreds of photographs at the scenes of fender-benders and fatal collisions. As car companies gradually introduced much-needed safety features like hydraulic brakes, it was Jones who scrambled to the sites where people had badly damaged property or in the worst cases, lost their lives.

 
Ambulance tips over on Stuart Street

 

 
Auto accident, 1935

 

 
Auto accident, corner of Warren Ave. and W. Canton St., South End

 

 
Auto accident in front of Hotel Vendome

 

Auto accident in South End, 1931

 

Auto goes into pond, 1938

 

 
Auto goes into trench in Peabody Square, 1931

 

Auto overturned at corner of Radcliffe Street, 1938

 

Auto wreck, Burlington, Massachusetts, 1931

 

Auto wreck, Roxbury crossing Columbus Avenue, 1931

 

Car crushed by trolley - North Hampton and Washington Sts, 1932

 

Auto hit by train kills two. Belmont, 1933

 

 
Car wreck at Charles River, Cambridge, 1933

 

 
Fence keeps car from falling, Brookline, 1931

 

 
Auto plunges into Fore River drowning 3. Fireboat pulls auto out, 1933

 

Truck and El Bus collide in South Boston, 1934

 

Truck hangs by wheel off bridge, 1934

 

Car and truck collide, Back Bay, 1932

 

Car goes into trench, 1935

 

Auto goes out of control and crashes through fence onto B&A Tracks near Greenwich Park, South End, 1934

 

Mystic River, 1930

 

Auto hits lamp post at intersection, 1930

 

Car in stairwell

 

Car stolen by kids crashes into lawyer's car, killing him, 1935

 

Auto wreck, South End, 1931

 

 
Truck crashes through garage several stories up East Cambridge, 1938

 

 
Wreck draws crowd, 1935