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How New Yorkers got mud off their boots

They used a boot scraper—a little device built into the iron railing leading to the front door of every decent house. It was a necessity in the mid-1800s, when most streets were still little more than muddy cowpaths or dirt thoroughfares lined with horse manure. This one is from an 1840s row house on West 11th Street and Seventh Avenue. 

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This entry was posted on May 29, 2008 at 2:39 am and is filed under Fashion and shopping, West Village. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “How New Yorkers got mud off their boots”

  1. Sister Sun (@SisSun2) Says:
    January 20, 2012 at 3:39 pm | Reply

    Cool bit of historical trivia. Thanks for posting this!

    ~NYC ex-pat in North Carolina

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