After donning their black "motorman" hats, the four women running the Como-Harriet Streetcar on Sunday evening lined up for a photo at the depot near Lake Harriet.
As a light drizzle fell, the operators took a moment to mark the occasion — what was likely the first time in more than seven decades that the 23-ton streetcar was in the hands of an all-female crew.
"Every ride is a celebration of the history of Minneapolis," said Leah Harp, one of the volunteers who operates the streetcar that now runs a 2-mile round trip from Lake Harriet to Bde Maka Ska, formerly Lake Calhoun. "But this is an especially rich one for honoring that history."
Of the 85 or so volunteer streetcar operators, just a handful are women. Finding a time when four of them could come together to form a full crew was a small way to pay homage to the "motorettes" who ran the streetcars during World War II.
"It's our own Rosie the Riveter story," said Linda Ridlehuber, another operator of the streetcar, which dates to the early 1900s.
Twin Cities Lines began hiring women in 1943. At the time, the company employed about 900 men under age 38 and estimated that about half of them would be called for military service. So advertisements went out to the women of the Twin Cities.
If they could prove they had adequate care for their children while they were at work, the women were paid the same as the men to clang bells, blow whistles, punch transfers and dispense tokens. More than 460 joined the ranks. At the end of the war, many of the motorettes were laid off as seniority determined who could stay. Several of them went on to become bus drivers.
"At the time it was a patriotic duty," Harp said. "And then suddenly these women were entering the world of 'men's work.' That worked to change expectations."
