More About These Postcards

What do These Postcards Show Us?

Local view postcards in this exhibit provide documentary evidence about the past: they show us how Williamstown used to look: graceful elms over Main St., old cars and stores that once stood on Spring St., buildings long gone, horse-drawn vehicles, unpaved roads.

But these postcards are not candid photographs. The images are highly selective (and many of them were airbrushed or colorized). Note that there are few people in these carefully-groomed landscapes. The cards present what producers and buyers of postcards thought was notable in Williamstown, and also what they wanted to see or remember: images of rural tranquility and elegance in “The Village Beautiful.”

Reading a Postcard (Front)

Reading a Postcard (Back)

How Were Postcards Made?

Some early postcards are just black and white photographs printed on card stock. If you wanted color, you had to add it to a black and white photo, or to a hand-drawn image.

Real photo cards
A negative, sometimes with hand-written words inscribed on it, is printed one at a time, in sepia or black and white, on photo paper with a preprinted postcard back. Common from about 1902. Superseded by Photochromes about 1940.

Chromolithography
The design is drawn with oil-based crayon on smooth-ground limestone, and then fixed with a wash that chemically changes the surface of the stone. The stone is then dampened and inked and sheets are printed. A separate stone is used for each color. Chromolithography was the most common method of producing early color postcards.

Collotype
The negative of a photo is transferred to a chemically-treated glass plate. The image is then modified by removing or adding details, and adding color (hand-tinted or screened). Cards are printed from etched plates.

Printed black-and-white photos were usually hand-colored with water-based paint (typically red, green, and blue), sometimes with the help of stencils. Low-paid hand-colorists, usually women, worked in assembly-line fashion, each one responsible for a single color

Photochrome
Color-photography process developed in the 1930s, and dominant in the printing of postcards since about 1940.

Major National Printers

Rotograph Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. Publisher of a series of cards, printed from hand-colored black-and-white photographs in Germany from 1904 to 1911, of buildings and rural scenes in Williamstown.
Rochester News Co., Rochester, NY, a distributor for the American News Company. Cards printed in Germany from 1902.
H. C. Leighton, Portland, ME, undivided cards, mostly printed in Frankfurt, Germany between 1906 and 1909. Leighton was a Williams College graduate (1902).
Raphael Tuck, England, with offices in US. Produced chromolithograph “undivided back” cards, mostly tinted halftones, printed 1901-07, with a writing tab on the front side (right or bottom), including Series #2251, “Williams College.”
Albertype, Brooklyn. Began printing both black-and-white and hand-colored cards in 1890. Printed their own line and also for other small publishers. Both the Bemis Store on Spring St. and the Williams Inn contracted with Albertype to produce cards for them.
Tichnor Brothers, Boston. Founded 1912. Published various kinds of cards. Their linen cards (“Tichnor Quality Views”) published c. 1930-45. The College Pharmacy on Spring St. and the Taconic Trail Tourist Shop (in No. Adams) contracted with Tichnor to produce cards for them.
Detroit Publishing Co., with offices in New York and Boston. Beginning in 1907 published a line of “Photostint” cards, including a Williamstown series in 1907-08.

Regional and Local Printers

C. W. Hughes, Mechanicsville, NY. From 1915 specialized in lithographic views of New York State, Vermont, and western Massachusetts. Later published Curt Teich linen cards
Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co., Belfast, ME, with an office in Orange, MA. Founded 1909. Specialized in real photo cards.
New England Printing Co., No. Adams
Sterling Printing Co., North Adams

Dating Postcards

You can date a postcard – the date on which it was mailed – by some obvious clues –the postmark, or a date mentioned in the message. Or details in the scene – for example, a new building, or a building that has since been demolished – can tell you when the card was produced, or at least date before which or after which the card was produced (more accurately: when the photo was taken from which the card was produced).

You can also date a postcard by some formal pre-printed features:

– By the title

If the words “Private Mailing Card” (rather than “Postcard” or “Post Card”) appear on the back of the card, it was produced between 1898 and 1901.

– By the format

Cards with an “undivided back” (i. e., with the back side reserved only for the postal address), were produced between 1901 and 1907. Cards on which the front (photo) side has a “white border” were produced c. 1915-30 – when producers cut costs by reducing the amount of expensive German printing ink required.

– By the stamp box
With the aid of a dating guide, such as the Real Photo Postcard Guide (2006), you can sometimes date a postcard by the pre-printed stamp box. The box usually just contains the words “Place Stamp Here” or “Place the Postage Stamp Here,” but sometimes the box is outlined with dots, lines, triangles, or letters of the printing company (e.g., Azo, Velox, Solio), and the designs changed from year to year.

– By the production technique

printed half-tone cards From the 1890s and before.
hand-colored 1902-
“real photos” (mostly black and white) 1903-
“linen cards” 1930s.
photochrome cards From late 1930s.

– By the canceled stamp.

The earliest postcards (pre-1898) required a 2-cent stamp. In 1898 the cost was reduced to a penny, where it remained, except for 1917-19 and 1925-28, until 1952. So most early postcards, if mailed, had a one-cent stamp. But not all one-cent stamps were in print at the same time.

For example, if the stamp carries a full-face portrait of Benjamin Franklin, it was produced 1903-08.

If a Franklin profile, 1908-12.

If a George Washington left profile, 1912-23.

If a Franklin profile with the words “U. S. Postage,” it was produced 1923-38.

Dating Clues and Timeline of Features

1873 pre-stamped 1-cent “postal cards” issued by US Post Office. (Private cards required 2 cents, same as letter.)

1898 “Private Mailing Cards” authorized by Act of Congress, postal rate reduced to 1 cent.

1899 “Velox” paper commercially available, for printing of photographic images.

1901 Post Office permits privately-printed cards to use the words “Post Card.”

1902 Rural Free Delivery – leads to higher volume of mail.

1902 hand-coloring of printed cards introduced.

1903 Kodak camera prints postcard-size negatives – so that anybody could produce a card.

1907 Post Office permits “divided back” cards, allowing senders to write message on left side of back.

1908 revolving metal postcard rack invented.

1909 tariff on imported cards.

1914 most printing of cards moves to U. S.

1915-30 “white border era.”

1930-45 “linen card era” – cards printed on textured, nonglossy card stock, which allowed photo to be dyed. Curt Teich a leading producer of linen cards.

1940-present “Photochrome” (or “chrome”) process introduced, which printed color photo directly on glossy card stock.

Some Additional Facts about Postcards

It is interesting to note that most of the cards in the collection were mailed quite locally, for example from Williamstown to Pittsfield or other Berkshire towns. Messages were short and relatively inconsequential: i.e. “How are you, John”, suggesting that the card itself, showing a scene or building, was of more interest than the message itself.
Many postcards were not addressed or sent, suggesting that they were purchased for albums rather than communication.
Some towns added a postmark (R.E.C.P.) to indicate when a card was received. This was usually the day after it had been sent. The postal system seemed to work efficiently in those days.
Occasionally a card’s message is written sideways or upside down on the message panel. Could this be for privacy (i.e. the postman would have to turn the card to read it)?
Not surprisingly, the great majority of the cards were mailed during the warmer months of the year. Travel was no doubt restricted during late fall, winter, and early spring.
In the extensive collections drawn from for this exhibit, there were surprisingly few mountain scenes. Far more numerous were scenes of peaceful country roads and the Village Beautiful itself. This may be because so many of the cards were sent locally: mountains were a part of everyday life.
The same photos were often reprinted with modifications: cutouts, back message area (post 1906) instead of front, hand coloring, etc.

Collecting Postcards

Hank Flynt, longtime resident of Williamstown, has long had an interest in local history, serving as chairman of the board of trustees of Historic Deerfield, and long associated with the Williamstown Historical Museum as board member and as volunteer. He acquired many of his postcards at annual auctions once held by the Williamstown Rotary Club, buying up entire albums that had been donated to the Club by local residents. He donated his collection to the Williamstown Historical Museum in 1990 and 1993.

Lee Drickamer was a professor in the Biology Department at Williams College for fifteen years from 1972 to 1987, later teaching at Southern Illinois University and at Northern Arizona University. He retired in 2009. While living in Williamstown he developed an interest in local history. He and his then-wife Karen are co-editors of Fort Lyons to Harper’s Ferry (1987), a collection of Civil War letters and news dispatches written by Charles Moulton while he served as a member of the 34th Massachusetts Infantry. He is also co-author of the Postal History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 1790-1981 (1982). Lee and Karen Drickamer assembled a substantial collection of local view postcards picturing Williamstown and other Berkshire County towns. They donated it to the Berkshire County Historical Society, where Lee Drickamer served as president of the board of trustees.

Studying Postcards

Local view postcards have long provided evidence to academic social historians seeking to reconstruct and understand the lives of ordinary people in earlier eras. One recent example is Allen F. Davis, who in 2002 published Postcards from Vermont: A Social History, 1905-1945 (New England University Press). In recent years postcards have also attracted the attention of scholars of visual culture. One collection of essays is Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, edited by David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson (Penn State University Press, 2010).