1893 · 1897 A railway, and a savings bankŽeleznica a sporiteľňa

Under Austria-Hungary Podolinec was a small town in the far north of the kingdom. The local railway up the Poprad valley began working in 1893, connecting it to Kežmarok and Poprad, and in 1897 the town founded its own savings bank. Those two small facts together are what the nineteenth century actually was in a place like this: money and movement arriving where both had been scarce. It was not enough to keep people at home. Like the whole of the northern Spiš, Podolinec sent emigrants to America in the decades before 1914.Za Rakúsko-Uhorska bol Podolínec malým mestom na samom severe krajiny. Miestna železnica popradskou dolinou sa rozbehla roku 1893 a spojila ho s Kežmarkom a Popradom, roku 1897 si mesto založilo vlastnú sporiteľňu. Tieto dva drobné údaje dokopy sú tým, čím bolo 19. storočie na takomto mieste: prišli peniaze a pohyb tam, kde predtým chýbalo oboje. Nestačilo to na to, aby ľudia zostali doma. Ako celý severný Spiš aj Podolínec posielal v desaťročiach pred rokom 1914 vysťahovalcov do Ameriky.