Sometime around the year 1910, a member of the Shimer family crossed South Emerson Avenue and took a photograph of the double tracks at the Pennsylvania Railroad. If the photographer had turned ever so slightly to the right, you would have seen the campus of Butler University. The lighter colored home in the far left of the image is the rear of 152 South Spencer Avenue. The home next to the utility pole is 159 South Spencer Avenue. Both homes still stand in 2023. After the last rail company abandoned the tracks in the later part of the twentieth century, various people bought the land and constructed houses or expanded their yards near this section of the former line. Looking at this photograph, it is easy to see why some Butler professors complained about the noise of nearby trains in the middle of their lecture.
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| Pennsylvania Railroad tracks at South Emerson Avenue in Irvington c1910 (photo courtesy of Chris Shimer) |
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| Site of former Pennsylvania Railroad tracks as seen by Google Streetview in August of 2019. |
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