Postcards from America

This is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division. It also appears in the July-August issue of Library of Congress Magazine.

Greetings from Washington, D.C.!

And from Gordon, Nebraska; Black River Falls, Wisconsin; San Francisco, California; and countless other big cities and tiny hamlets spread across the vastness of the United States.

The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division recently placed online more than 8,000 “real photo” postcards from the early 1900s — cards that preserve images of life as it existed in turn-of-the-century America.

The production and use of postcards exploded in the United States after a federal law, passed in 1907, allowed for messages to be written on the backs of the cards along with the addresses. Previously, postcards were widely used, but messages could only be added to the fronts of cards, which detracted from the images.

At a time when relatively few households had a telephone, postcards provided quick and convenient communication. Many people also collected cards as souvenirs in albums.

Large companies fed this new market with millions of cards featuring popular landmarks and tourist sites, humorous pictures, holiday greetings and advertisements. Local photographers participated in the craze by printing their negatives on a photographic card stock, typically 3^1/2 by 5^1/2 inches in size. The Library’s postcard holdings are vast.

Their images show an America hard at work and play, and the country’s innate sense of humor. In South Dakota, men top off a giant haystack. A boy rides an enormous prize rooster at the Minnesota State Fair. In Olustee, Oklahoma, a couple poses in the back seat of their Overland automobile, their dog in the driver’s seat, paws on wheel.

And they show an America moving ahead into a new, modern era: A biplane flies down Main Street in Mayville, Wisconsin; an 1913 illustrated card calls for votes for women.

When photographers expected large sales for a card, they could deposit a copy of the card for copyright protection. The Prints and Photographs Division now preserves thousands of those copyright deposit postcards.

The Collections Digitization Division scanned all the cards in 2023, fronts and backs — now all waiting online to be explored.

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