Grand Island, Nebraska

The City of Grand Island really was once an island between the Wood and North Platte rivers. The settlement was moved north of the Platte River in the late 1800s, but the name was retained.

Some of the buildings shown on this postcard are still standing, including the Hotel Yancey, which is now the Yancey Condominiums, but the street seems to have lots some of its liveliness and charm. On the other hand, I do wonder how many of those figures in the first postcard were really there. Notice how they all look the same?


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Tracy the Troublemaker

Remember Tracy? No, of course you don't, but I suspect he was a real character. I  have a number of postcard addressed to him. Click here for a link to the previous one, where it appears he had been trying to fix a ballgame. And here's another one below, postmarked February, 1906.  Oh, Tracy, what have you done?

Hmmm, no indication of who sent it.

Herford, Germany

Herford is a city of 65,000 in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany that was originally founded by Charlemagne in 789. The city still has some buildings dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, but it also has a contemporary art museum designed by Frank Gehry. This card is most interesting to me because of its varied fonts and writing styles.

The message on the front of the card is written in old German script, by someone who was accustomed to writing on the front of the cards due to early postal regulations that allowed nothing other than the address on the back of the card.  This card has a place for the message, which is blank. I struggle with old German script, but it appears to be a simple happy birthday greeting from grandma. 

The address was likely written by someone else, since the handwriting is different. On top of that, Postkarte is printed in a very distinctive art nouveau or Jugendstil style, while the text below is an old German Fraktur font. The front of the card has a modern font along with another one that I don't recognize. It's just all a strange intersection of old and new styles. It looks like the card was sent in 1907.