CATCHING A RIDE around town in Schenectady

If you read the copy on the front of this card you'll see that I've still vaguely got my bridge theme going. I mean, really vague. Was the photographer standing on the R.R. Bridge? Was he or she concerned about an oncoming train as he or she yelled to the people in the street below, "Okay, everyone stop and smile. Well, you don't need to smile, but please stop moving!" Or was this the final shot this photographer every took?




Click on either image to see it larger.

I quite like the treatment of "Post Card" on the back. I also love the signage on the buildings.

CATCHING A RIDE around town in Detroit

I'm going to make things easy on myself for a little while. After posts about bridges, both rural and urban, I'm going to show you street scenes from long ago which feature some form of transportation. I'm not going to be digging deep to provide information about any of the cities or streets. We're just going to step back in time and look at what urban congestion looked like long ago.

Let's start off in Detroit at the "Church and Y. M. C. A. Buliding." Yes, you read that right. "Buliding" is how it is spelled on the front of this card. Who got fired over that mistake? The printer or the proofreader? How many were printed before someone said, "Ummmmm...excuse me. I know I've only got a 6th grade education, but I think the word buliding is wrong."


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Now, lest you believe that is the only typo, I can say with glee, "You're wrong!" Take a look at the back copy for what probably clinched the whole firing episode.


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DAY FOR NIGHT in Denver

The information in Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities becomes even more interesting as I look through my collection of vintage postcards. I start to find examples of what the author writes about.

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"Most nighttime postcard views were daytime photographs doctored to appear as if taken after dark. Use of daytime photos to replicate the night introduced many anomalies in finished cards. For example, daytime shadows often remained. When a bright moon was inserted in a darkened sky, the moonlight implied was often inappropriate to the shadows depicted. Especially problematical were the small shadows cast by pedestrians and vehicles, their impossibility of angle all too apparent. As one deltiologist noted: “Darkening the sky, lighting the windows, and adding a moon could…turn a day scene into a nocturnal one, but all to often the printer failed to remove the shadows cast by the sun and then tipped his moon in an obviously impossible position (Ryan 146). Other anomalies included American flags left flying (countering prohibitions on after-dark flag displays) and kinds of people remaining as pedestrians, especially unescorted women, who would not have been seen in big city downtown after dark." (SOURCE: Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities)

And this is another card from the Harry Heye Tammen Company. Note the little Mesoamerican figure on the back, the companies logo.

Now take a moment to look at this busy "night scene" and tell me if you think this was actually day for night. I'm seeing far too many women out for leisurely strolls.

___________

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SALT LAKE CITY at night

As I mentioned yesterday, I purchased a book called Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities which has inspired me to go through some of my vintage postcards searching for night scenes, real or simply imagined by the manufacturer.

The one below of Salt Lake City, Utah is a prime example of the company trying something but failing miserably. Proportion is way off. I mean WAY OFF!

Click on image to see it larger.

Look at the cars. Tons of cars. Cars jammed in with no room to even open a car door to get out. Then look at the cars on the left side of the street, their size in comparison to the street lights. Oh sure, the artist was trying to draw perspective, but it looks like they had a bunch of VW Beetles parked along the street, very very tiny Beetles.

And then there's the car driving down the righthand lane. Why so close to the backend of each parked car? It's a wide street. They even make a point of bragging about the wide street:

This is an excellent night view of alt Lake City's main business thoroughfare. Note the unusual width of the street so typical of all streets in Mormon communities.

Huh? Mormon's were known for their wide streets? Okay, I'll leave that alone. It's just odd.

What's also odd is that the left side of the street seems to be the "dry" side while the right side is where the honky tonk "cafes" are located. Remember, when this shot was "taken" you could not buy liquor or even a Coke in this town. So as to what was going on on the two sides of the same street...one can only imagine.

I can't find anything about the manufacturer, Carpenter Paper Co., other than that they began operations in 1896.

More nighttime scenes to come.

ADA, MINNESOTA

I give you a post card of Ada, Minnesota. Turn-of-the-century Midwest. The people dressed as if they just stepped out of the movie Pollyana.

Click on image above to see it larger.

What's so fascinating about worn out cards like this is that I can actually go online and see, through Google maps, what the town looks like from above today. I can also stand on a corner and do a complete 360 of one section of the town, strangely devoid of humans, which you can see here. Below is a shot showing the same buildings that are on this card off in the distance.

And here we have a close-up of the same buildings. If you click here you will go to the page where the original photo resides shot by hoss10. Then click on the shot and you'll see it larger.

(SOURCE: hoss10)

Ada was a small town then, it's a small town now with a population during the last census of around 1,600 people. Looking at it from above it's a town surrounded by farmland, just as I imagine it was over 100 years ago.

Minnesota is one of the three states I've never been to, the others being North Dakota and Alaska. I'll probably never get to Minnesota so Ada will have to do. The person who sent this card, oh so long ago, could have never imagined the future and how this card would end up in the hands of a person over 100 years later on the other side of the continent. And now, because of their choice to send this card I now share it with you.