1897-00-00: (Steam-Powered Tram Service Unveiled in Port-au-Prince, a Marker of Urban Modernization in a Capital City That Remained the Administrative and Ec…
1897-00-00: (Steam-Powered Tram Service Unveiled in Port-au-Prince, a Marker of Urban Modernization in a Capital City That Remained the Administrative and Economic Heart of a Largely Rural Nation): In 1897, steam-powered tram service was unveiled in Port-au-Prince, replacing the horse-drawn tram system that had been introduced in 1878. The tram represented the incremental modernization of Haiti’s capital, a city that served as the administrative, economic, and cultural center of a nation whose population was still overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. The steam tram connected neighborhoods of a city that was growing but still small, a capital whose infrastructure lagged behind that of comparable Latin American cities by decades, starved of investment by the indemnity payments and chronic political instability that had consumed the nation’s resources since independence.