The Rare Book Room Post Card Collection

Before the world was introduced to the World Wide Web and the ease of searching the Internet for absolutely anything, people had to visit their local library and browse through many print books and picture books to find an image to use for art projects, homework, or just curiosity. Some larger libraries, like our own predecessors, the Buffalo Public and the Grosvenor Reference Libraries, had their own collections of images for patrons to view. Those two collections of postcards have since been combined and added to the variety of paper materials found in our current Rare Book Room here at the Central Library.

“Buffalo” postcard by W.H. Brandel, 1903

Of course, the local treasures are the 700 plus cards devoted to the city of Buffalo and places in Erie County, New York that record the changing landscape and the vanishing buildings, pastimes and businesses from our past.

Circa 1911

Circa 1910

Circa 1914

Circa 1918

The entire collection includes over 28,000 cards from all over the world, with over half of those estimated to have been published between 1898 and 1924, based on copyright and postmark dates, as well as other clues. The images cover many subjects and geographic locations, including a variety of countries, artists’ works, historical figures, architecture, libraries and flowers. Just about anything you can imagine. 

Cape Town, South Africa, Flower Sellers

Chinatown, San Francisco, circa 1920

Anchor Line Elevator, Erie, PA, circa 1905

Floating Temple, Japan

Nice, Flower Market

Flour Girl, Haiti

Italia Airship, Faenza Italy, circa 1905-10

Camel Group, Cairo

Konigsplein, Amsterdam

Terrace of the Casino, Monte Carlo

Motomachi Sanchome, Kobe

Ice Bridge, Niagara Falls, circa 1912

Circa 1915

Sometimes, the images are just simply whimsical, or awesome.

Missie, Berlin Zoo, c.irca1920

Silvaplana vicinity, Switzerland

Travel Scrapbooks of former Grosvenor Librarian

A recent donation of five travel scrapbooks that once belonged to a former Grosvenor Library staff member have been added to the many unique collections in the Grosvenor Rare Book Room.

Jane Van Arnam, later Wiseman, was the daughter of Seymour and Harriet Van Arnam who resided at 76 Highland Ave. in Buffalo. Seymour was an executive at the Pitts Company, a leading manufacturer of machinery prior to World War II, and Harriet was active in church, clubs, and charity work. Jane graduated from the Buffalo Seminary in 1920 and soon after joined her sister Anna as an assistant in the Catalog Department of the Grosvenor Reference Library, later moving to the Periodical Department and working as a librarian until 1954. Her meticulous skills as a reference librarian are evident from the 5-volume travel scrapbooks she maintained from 1925 until the late 1940’s.

Within the carefully organized volumes are photographs, post cards, letters, menus, passenger lists and pamphlets from the many trips she took throughout Europe, Canada, the U. S., South America and other exotic places.  The scrapbooks as a whole provide a glimpse into the life of a working Buffalo blueblood, as well as the world of popular travel in the early-to-mid-20th century.  Jane died in 1989 at the age of 86.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.