The Case of the Disappearing Telephone Poles

Below are two identical photographs of Cuba City's South Main Street, looking north. True, one photograph is black-and-white and one has a hint of blue sky. But the photographs themselves are the same. Or are they?

Apparently deemed an eyesore, the telephone poles and lines were edited out of the colorized version of this image, published by Cuba City's own Barker Bros. Drug Co. 

The original photograph was likely taken between 1908-1913, and the color version published a few years later. Both of Cuba City's banks are accounted for: the Farmers Bank/Cuba City State Bank on the left and the dome of the First National Bank in the distance on the right. Two barber shops can also be spotted by looking for the barber poles: one in front of William Udelhoven's shop on the right and another in front of Bert Nankivil's place up the street on the left. Other visible signs are S.A. Schmieder, Brewer Bros. Clothing, Florine Drugs, and J. A. Fiedler.

Cuba City's telephone and electric poles actually did disappear on Main Street in 1924, when the wires were placed in cables to better show off the city's new street lamps.