NOW AND THEN : Early 20th century height of ‘postcard craze’
Posted on Sunday, January 6, 2008
In 1917 a Fayetteville girl penciled a note to a friend," Hello kid: How are you ? I believe you are dead. Haven't heard from you. Write me a long letter please. "The message is ordinary, but the medium the girl chose is full of interest. She wrote her note on a postcard with a striking color image of the Washington County Courthouse. According to the credit line on the card, it was printed in Germany for the Red Cross Drug Store in Fayetteville.
The card was one of countless millions published in response to an exploding demand in early 20 th century America.
Picture postcards were first available in the United States in 1893. A souvenir of the Chicago World's Fair, they were popular in Chicago but were slow to catch on in the rest of the country.
When they did take hold early in the 20 th century, they became very popular. By 1905 there was so much postcard activity in the country that newspapers began referring to a "postcard craze. "One wag thought it a disease and labeled it "postal carditis."
Collecting postcards became a fad. People joined clubs and exchanged cards across the nation. Collectors mounted their cards in special albums and placed them on the parlor table next to the family photo album. In recent decades those cards have been turning up in estate sales and antique shops, much to the delight of new generations of collectors who see them as valuable history.
The wide range of subjects offers a rather impressive summary of the rich complexity of American life before World War I.
Professional photographers traveled all around our communities photographing natural features, sporting events, buildings, celebrations, disasters, street scenes and all sorts of economic activities.
What the professionals missed, amateurs often caught. Anyone out "kodaking"with an inexpensive camera could produce postcards by simply printing their pictures on special postcard stock. Those cards were usually one-of-a-kind items and are coveted by collectors today.
The subjects found on postcards are an indication of what people valued. Among Washington County cards, views of the University of Arkansas campus are most prevalent. The A. F. Wolf House, disassembled and moved to Fayetteville from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the new county courthouse and the University of Arkansas' Old Main were among the buildings most frequently pictured. The Winslow Tunnel, built in 1882 for the Frisco Railroad, was often featured. And sometimes sports personalities at the UA appeared on cards.
While small markets were satisfied by photographs printed directly as postcards, cards in quantity were ordered from large printing operations. As postcards became big business, there were plenty of printing options.
The best quality cards were produced in Europe. Europeans experienced their own postcard craze long before the United States, and their printers had mastered the technology.
The quality of the cards mattered. In Fayetteville there were at least four drug stores, five variety stores and two newsstands all producing their own line of cards and competing for customers.
The Red Cross Drug Store was responsible for some of the best quality cards in Washington County. The drug store ordered pictures from photographer Burch Grabill whose studio was nearby on the Fayetteville Square. The store sent Grabill's black and white prints, along with a written description of the color scheme of buildings and scenery, to a German printing firm. The firm employed artists to color the views and craftsmen to prepare stones for the lithographic process - one stone for each color.
Printers normally charged about $ 5 for a thousand cards. A collector today might pay that much for one card.
Highbrow writers were contemptuous of the national fixation on postcards. They worried about what postcards would mean to the art of letter writing. But today's collectors think of those early cards as very special. The height of the era, the first decade or so of the 20 th century, is now referred to as "the Golden Age"of picture postcards.
By World War I the popular passion for exchanging and collecting postcards had begun to cool, partly, perhaps, because the beautiful cards of European printers were harder to come by after the United States enacted a tariff in 1909.
Of course postcards have continued being part of our informal communication between family and friends, but the quality and quantity of later offerings has rarely equaled the cards of the "Golden Age."
Patty Besom, a former English teacher and secretary, teaches piano. Bob Besom is director emeritus of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History.
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