Visiting Ado

It’s been awhile since I posted about old postcards, so for those of you new to my old bloggy-wog: one of the things I have an interest in is old postcards.  I love them blank or with writing (they are two very different artifacts!).  I adore finding collections of these in antique or specialty stores and spending hours poring over them.

Old postcards with writing are especially fascinating: they are glimpses into the past.  The off-hand messages written by people (almost certainly now dead, written to people also now dead) who never expected long-distant strangers to be buying their postcards and reading the messages and pondering the lives of those in the past–it can often take my breath away.  In addition, the evolution of the postal service (and by extension, our culture at large) can be traced via how the postcards are addressed, stamped, and postmarked.  And the postcards themselves are beautiful and delightful artifacts, themselves changing in style and purpose about every two decades.

Anyway, I recently came across an enormous cache of old Harrisburg postcards at a local bookstore and my postcard interest has been renewed.  I present to you here one that I just bought today.

This postcard is from the early 1930s.  Almost anytime you see a postcard in this style–artist’s renderings in vibrant colors with a white border–they are from the ’30s.  It shows what was then the Harrisburg Educational Building (now the State Archives):

The back, postmarked August 14th, 1933 (that’s 82 years ago, folks!) in Philadelphia, and sent to Marietta, PA (a town about 30 miles from Harrisburg).  It is of interest that a Harrisburg postcard was sent from Philadelphia to a town near Harrisburg.  Elements of the address are of interest.  It was sent to:

Mrs. Frank Ziegler
Front St
Marietta Lanc Co
Penn

Of course the whole Mrs. Frank Ziegler isn’t surprising for the time, but given how the world has changed since then, it is of interest.  The street address being simply Front St with no number speaks to a much simpler time, at  least mail-wise, if nothing else.  Note the absence of a zip code.  The inclusion of the county was, I believe, even strange for the time period–I’ve never seen it before.

The text of the postcard is thus:

Monday, August 14, 1933

Dear Aunt Mabel

Dorothy and Marion are bringing Mother to Marietta to visit Mrs. Peck, so I decided since I wasn’t nursing I would like to bring Bob and myself along with them and stay all night with you then go to Quarryville on Thursday to visit Ado.  That would mean four of us staying at your house Wednesday nite.  [name I can’t read], Marion, Bob & I.  Hope it is OK, See you Wed, Mimmie