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 You would take the streetcar to work or Elmira Free Academy - the only high school in town.
Another streetcar might kill you when you got off.
You would work six days a week.
If you were a bank clerk at the Chemung Canal Bank you would work Saturday nights.
If you were really, really lucky you might get a week’s paid vacation.
Perhaps a 10-year-old would be piloting the elevator in the Rathbun Hotel (don’t worry; the building was only six floors).
If you were black, you would live on the "Eastside" of the railroad tracks. You could be a respected policeman or a fireman, but never police chief or fire chief. You would have to sit in the balconies of the theaters. You could be a lawyer or a doctor or a minister or a porter.
You would shop Downtown (even, perhaps, for groceries).
6% of us Elmirans graduated high school.
If you spoke Spanish in your home, you wouldn't be living in Elmira - although "El Mira" is a Spanish term meaning "beautiful view".
Everybody lived in their own section and you didn't stray somewhere that you didn't belong or mix with others who weren't like you. If you were Polish, you lived in "Polander Town". Germans lived in the "Buttonwoods". Jews lived in "Jewtown". The Irish lived in "Pickaway". Regular American people lived on the "Westside" of the railroad tracks.If you were white and had a fancy title or owned a business, you might live on William Street or on Maple Avenue.
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If you lived in Southport, you definitely would be raising something or growing something or tending to some kind of animal.
If you were Italian with an "unpronounciable last name", a cop could arrest you ‘on suspicion’ and then try to figure out what to charge you with.
The average life expectancy in the United States was 47 years.
You could be arrested for speaking to a crowd without a permit.
 If you were a police officer, you might have to work from 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. You wouldn’t have a union or even an officers’ association.
A three-minute telephone call from Elmira to Denver cost $11.
A streetcar conductor would work from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. (even on the Fourth of July).
You could go to see a “coon show” at the Lyceum Theatre or even be in one if you had some blackface makeup (or already had a black face).
The last course of any dinner at the Rathbun Hotel would be a cigar. Fancy dinners attended by big shots would be closed to women. Although "women" could be found on the corner across the street all day and all night.
You could see Lillian Russell, Sarah Bernhardt, William Randolph Hearst, or Booker T. Washington in person at the Lyceum Theatre on Lake Street - and afterword have a delicious turkey sandwich served by Bill Miller at the Lyceum Cafe next door.
95% of all Elmirans were born AT HOME.
All ladies would be women, but not all women would be ladies - in fact, if you went over to Railroad Avenue....
You would have to buy textbooks for your schoolchild at jam-packed Downtown stores.
Elmira Free Academy would be overcrowded.
The average Elmiran made between $200 and $400 per year.
If you were a woman you couldn't vote because you couldn't be trusted to make a good decision, but you could join a club and try to do good things for your community and your country. You could also work six days a week in a department store.
If you were a married woman, you would always use your husband’s name, with Mrs. in front of it.
If you were a teacher, you couldn’t get married and keep your job (unless you were a man, and then you probably wouldn’t be a teacher; you would be on the School Board).
You would get the flu in December or January, but you would call it the "grippe" and have to be treated with our local Elmendorf Salve.
If you were Chinese, there would be about 10 other people like you living somewhere in town (we're not exactly sure where because you weren't mentioned in the census, but you had laundries so we knew you were here), and most white folks would think you odd, dirty and smelly. You would probably be a man and, if so, you would wear your hair in a pigtail.
You could have plenty of fun on the boats (or in the bushes) at Eldridge Park. Eldridge Park was known for its bushes.
Your local minor-league baseball team would be called the "Gladiators" until 1892 and the "Colonels" in 1908.
If you were president of the Elmira Savings & Loan bank, you would pack heat.
You could get two years in the clink for stealing seven cents from the Park Church poor box.
You could take your whole family swimming in the Chemung River for free. Some of you didn't come back because the river was known for its semi-monthly drownings.
If you were a man living in Elmira Heights, chances are you voted in 1909 to outlaw the sale of beer and wine except at drug stores. If you were a woman living there, you couldn't vote.
If you lived in Horseheads, you’d be surrounded by nature.
If you died, chances are your final illness would be diagnosed as "tuberculosis".
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the Gerrity Brothers' drugstore at the corner of Lake and Carroll Streets.
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