In a recent History at Home, Rita DeMatteo talked about the history of Llewellyn Park using postcards, primarily from the “golden age of postcards,” between 1895 and 1915. She mentioned research that estimates that in 1905 alone, 7 billion postcards were send worldwide.
Back then, postcards were not just the way to send a picture of your vacation spot to family or friends who weren’t lucky enough to go with you. Though they might have been used in that way, they were also a handy means of communication before text messages, email,pagers, and even phones. They were, in essence, the text messages of their day.
With many towns, including Montclair, offering mail delivery several times a day, postcards became an easy way to reach out to someone in the morning to see they were free to join you that evening for dinner or at a club event you wanted to attend. Send a postcard off with the morning mail and get a response back with the afternoon delivery. They were a quick way to let someone know you’d arrived at your destination or to let them know when you’d arrive home.
The Montclair History Center has over 500 postcard images in its digital collection. You can scroll through them here. The images on the postcards give us a glimpse into a time communication was simpler and Montclair was not so built up.
Like this pretty view of Myrtle Avenue:
Or the Wading Pond at Glenfield Park.
This postcard is of the Mansion House Hotel on Bloomfield Avenue, not far from where the MC Hotel today.
And here’s a great shot of the Montclair Fire Department. Were they showing off new equipment? A new fire station? Or just posing for their equivalent of a selfie?
Sometimes the notes are just as much fun as the images. On this postcard, “Geo” or George writes to Ted about the “dandy drive” he took along Fullerton Avenue with Aunt Hab and Ethel.
Many postcards are quick notes just to say let the recipient know they haven’t been forgotten. In this pretty one of Crystal Lake, Maggie jots off a quick note to her sister, promising a longer letter soon.
On the other hand in this postcard of the Eagle Rock Trolley, M. C. Snyder pulls no punches: “Have you forgotten me? I haven’t you.” Ouch.
Some postcards we will never understand. One in the collection says, “Tomorrow is the fourteenth.” Others are clearly inside jokes. And a few are just impossible to read. But one of our favorites is this one, perhaps from a student at he Montclair Military Academy.
It reads, “My dear Rene, that was too bad that you should think that I could forget all about you. Why I have your picture on my dresser and look at it every time I go upstairs. Of course it isn’t a very good one, but alas, it is all I have. … The girls in Conn. are not in it compared with the one in Newark. Signed, HRR”