Vintage Postcards: Postcard Blog » roadside America

Pure Oil Company Gas Station Postcards

VintagePostcards — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:06:07 +0000

As we weather the remnants of the Great Ice Storm of 2009 here in Kentucky and await the return of Alexander Graham Bell’s fabulous invention — the telephone — our mind began to wander to more pleasant thoughts: in our case, roadside Americana that we saw when young(er). Every summer, Dad took us on road trips to historical sites. We think we’ve seen every Civil War battlefield and every museum on the East Coast from Mystic Harbor, Connecticut on down to about the Florida state line.

Bored by battlefields, we began collecting roadside America postcards. An especially nice example which we recently acquired is this c. 1930s triple-view post card of the Pure Oil gas station and roadside motel on Route 11, five miles south of Harrisonburg, Virginia. This old postcard offers an interesting glimpse into motel rooms of the time. Spartan by today’s standards, they offered neither a radio nor a telephone. (Television wouldn’t make its motel room debut until the early 1950s.)

Pure Oil, founded in 1914 in Columbus, Ohio, began building its signature blue-roofed gas stations, based loosely upon English cottage architecture, in about 1926; more “contemporary” designs emerged in the late 1940s. Published by Marken & Bielfeld of Frederick, Maryland, this is a classic roadside America, Rockingham County or petroliana collectible in excellent condition.

See some frightful meteorology postcards and be grateful for the weather you’ve got, or visit our selection of Route 40 postcards at our website to see some more old roadside America postcards. Or, visit the world’s largest postcard bookstore.

A Classic Lincoln Highway Postcard

VintagePostcards — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:10:10 +0000

When I was a child of about six, my father began traveling Route 40 and Route 30 on summer trips to see my grandparents. I was attracted to roadside postcards documenting where we stayed and what we saw, and this fondness for roadside Americana has continued throughout my life, as I obtained a master’s degree in historic preservation and became an architectural historian.

Here’s a classic example of a 1950s roadside Americana postcard. Its highly detailed graphics depict Crosser’s Amoco service station and roadside diner on the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) in Lisbon, Ohio. The gas station, in the Spanish Revival architectural style, actually dates to the 1920s or 1930s, when this style was popular. A bonus with this gas station collectible from Columbiana County is the roadside diner next to the gas station.

Read another post about roadside America postcards, or see more roadside postcards at our website. You can learn more about the Lincoln Highway in the roadside section of our popular reference page.

An Outsider Art Black Americana Postcard

VintagePostcards — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:06:25 +0000

For collectors of black Americana vintage postcards, it doesn’t get much better than this! Collectibles which depict every-day life in the black community are scarce, and this old black history postcard shows the proud owner of a 1952 Pontiac, which he has decorated in a folk art, or outsider art, manner. This great image was made in 1973 at a Gulf gas station in Houston, TX and is in near-mint condition. It has cross-appeal to the roadside America, or roadside Americana, collector and is also an interesting petroliana collectible.

Read another post about roadside America collectibles, or browse the selection of black Americana or gas station postcards at our website.

Classic Neon Signs at the Bluebird Cafe

VintagePostcards — Sun, 18 May 2008 02:02:07 +0000

We’ve long been attracted to classic American roadside post cards, and thought we’d share this dramatic nighttime example. The Bluebird Cafe, with its classic neon signs, is seen in Logan, Utah in a circa 1950s or 1960s chrome postcard. The photograph was taken by J. Fred Thunall. The historic restaurant, with its marble soda fountain, is still in business on Main St.

What do you like best about old roadside postcards? Read about scarce outsider art Indiana postcards, and see other examples of roadside Americana at our website.

The Civil Rights Movement in Vintage Postcards

VintagePostcards — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:22:25 +0000

The great graphics in this unused c. 1930s to 1940s vintage postcard of the Art Deco-style Greyhound bus station in Jackson, Mississippi don’t give a hint of the building’s importance to the Civil Rights movement. Bus travel was often one of the few reliable means of travel for black Americans prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Travel by car through Southern states, in particular, could be dangerous, and the number of motels accepting black travelers was, frankly, unpredictable. Often, weary travelers rode the bus: it was economical, and they could sleep on the bus. In fact, this Jackson, MS bus stop was nicknamed the “Jackson Hilton.”

This Greyhound bus depot also played a role in black history: it was the destination of the second Freedom Riders’ bus on 24 May 1961. After their arrival, hundreds of civil rights demonstrators were detained in animal pens at the State Fairgrounds. The post card has ““cross-over” appeal to collectors of black Americana, roadside Americana and Hinds County material.

The bus station was also noteworthy for its streamlined Art Deco appearance. The blue glass on it was Vitrolite, a type of structural glass often used decoratively on the façades of Art Deco and Art Moderne buildings for its bold impression. It was last manufactured in 1947. Unlike terra cotta, which had been used experimentally and primarily for ornamentation in earlier 20th c. architecture, Vitrolite didn’t warp or swell and wasn’t prone to fading or staining. Impervious to moisture and easily cleaned with a damp cloth, it made streetside maintenance easy. In other words, it was perfect for a building which received heavy traffic, like the bus station. Vitrolite could also be brilliantly colored, as seen here.

You can see more antique postcards and black Americana on our website.

Learn about collectible black Americana trade cards, which offer insights into American social history.

Dating Curteich Linen Postcards

VintagePostcards — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:47:02 +0000

We sometimes receive e’mail from postcard collectors wondering how we know the date of an unused postcard. While a date range can only be supplied with most unused old postcards, post cards published by Curteich (known as Curt Teich in earlier days) from the mid-1930s through the 1950s have an easy-to-understand built-in dating system.

Looking at the back of the motel postcard, one sees a code printed in the stamp box at top right. The code reads 2C-H3, the most important part of the code being the 2C. Curteich used an easy-to-remember numbering system for its colorful linen postcards, many of which are classic roadside Americana images. All cards from the mid-1930s on contained the letter “A”: thus, a postcard bearing the code 6A would be from 1936. “A” denoted the 1930s and 6 denoted the year 1936.

“B” series Curteich postcards were published in the 1940s: a postcard with the code 7B would have been published in 1947. “C” series postcards are from the 1950s, and thus we see that the motel postcard, coded as 2C, is from 1952.

Curteich date coding also sometimes appears on the fronts of postcards; in the case of this Route 70 postcard, the coding is at bottom right.

We’ve enlarged this code as best we can; it says 0C-H51, meaning that this post card was published in 1950. You can learn more about Dating Curt Teich Postcards at the Curt Teich postcard archives of the Lake County Forest Preserves.

See the Curteich postcards at our website.

Read about more roadside postcards.