The pleasure palace

The second of four Manhattan structures to bear the name, this incarnation of Madison Square Garden, designed by Stanford White, was opened to the public in 1890. In this postcard view the building and nearby structures have been garishly outlined with the addition of glitter, which isn't readily visible in the scan. There is some lettering on the tower that appears to read "OPEN BY NIGHT."

In 1906, the year after this copy of the card was mailed to Mrs. Leo Keck of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the building proved White's undoing. While enjoying a musical performance in its rooftop theater, he was shot to death by Harry K. Thaw, the pathologically jealous husband of one of his former lovers, Evelyn Nesbit. Confined to a mental institution after two sensational murder trials (the first ended in a hung jury), Thaw was released after a few years and died a free man in 1947.

The building also hosted the 1924 Democratic National Convention, which took 103 ballots to nominate John K. Davis to run, unsuccessfully, against incumbent President Calvin Coolidge. It was torn down the following year.

On Jordan Pond?

This card doesn't bear the Rotograph name or any other identifying markings, but the typography and layout are recognizable enough to classify this as a likely "cryptorotograph," possibly commissioned by a local merchant. I haven't noticed the bizarre capital "H" elsewhere, however.

Jordan Pond (the possessive, if it was ever used, has been dropped) is located on Mt. Desert Island within Acadia National Park. I've stopped there many times to eat popovers on the lawn of the Jordan Pond House, one of the few dog-friendly restaurants in the area. (It draws tourists by the busload but is worth a stop anyway.) The original structure, dating from the nineteenth century, was replaced after a fire in 1979.

But the postcard above is incorrectly captioned. Compare the prospect shown below, identified by the U.S. Geological Survey as Little Long Pond, which is a bit further to the south of Jordan Pond. According to the accompanying information on the Maine.gov website, the building on the left, which no longer stands, was at one time the Seal Harbor post office.

The two low hills in the center distance, which are known as the Bubbles, appear much closer and higher when seen from Jordan Pond, as below:

Enthusiasm

"Having a passable time."

Apparently the attractions of the Jersey Shore in August 1909 left something to be desired, at least in the neighborhood of Bayonne.

A Mr. Henry J. Lehman of the same Walworth Street address as the recipient is listed in several city directories of the period as an insurance agent; I've found no evidence that he was related to the famous Lehman Brothers banking family.

The January 7, 1913 edition of Brooklyn's Daily Standard Leader reports that one Benjamin Silver, who had previously been arrested for attempting to pick Henry Lehman's pocket, was charged, along with a bail bondsman named Abraham Treibitz, with offering the intended victim a $50 bribe to fail to identify Silver in court. Two detectives, tipped off by Lehman and concealed in his house, promptly arrested the pair and charged them with bribery. The charge may not have stuck: an Abraham Treibitz was still active as a bail bondsman in New York City at least as late as 1931, when he arranged for the release of five Communist leaders arrested during the International Unemployment Day demonstrations. His name also seems to have surfaced during the Seabury Commission's investigations of municipal corruption in the early 1930s, which suggests that perhaps Mr. Treibitz was not one of the more ethically scrupulous members of his profession.

A view of the countryside

This sepia-toned Rotograph has a relatively uncommon 2 5/8'' x 6 1/4'' format more suited for use as a bookmark than as a postcard, though it does have a space for the address on the back (this example was never mailed). It's unnumbered and there's no caption to identify the location, which features a field of some kind of cereal crop on the right, a cluster of trees (probably mostly evergreens) on the left, and some tiny white dots in the center distance that might be grazing livestock. The soil seems to be sandy or chalky.

According to the (defunct) Rotopex website, many but not all of the other bookmark-shaped cards depicted views of the Dutch countryside, but the topography here seems to be more upland than pays-bas. The format doesn't seem to have been popular, and may represent an experiment that was abandoned, but I like the quiet stillness of the scene.

Norwich

Sept. 18, 1907. Took a trolley from Groton to Westerley and from there to Norwich and from here to New London.

I haven't devoted much time to this project lately, but here's a nice image from Norwich, Connecticut. The card bears a message and date but no address or postmark on the back. The bridge appears to be the Shetucket River Railroad Bridge, which dates from 1890.

Along the river

Here are some Rotographs from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in the environs of one of my favorite bodies of water, the little Housatonic River that flows through western Massachusetts and Connecticut, past some of the prettiest scenery in New England, before emptying out into Long Island Sound. These are from an unlettered series, although the numbers on the back (65251, 65254, 65264, and 65271) fit more or less into the numbering range of Rotograph's flashier "G" series views of the same area, if you substitute a G for the initial 6.


The Green River, above, is a tributary.

The image below actually merits a footnote in the history of photography: "Brookside" was the estate of William H. Walker, an early photographic inventor and Kodak executive who is credited with helping develop the film roll-holding system that replaced the earlier glass plates, paving the way for the explosion in amateur photography made possible by Kodak's box cameras. Eventually, Walker and Kodak founder George Eastman seem to have had a falling out, but not before the former's fortune had been made.


Some of the gardens at Brookside were designed by the noted landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale. The estate is now operated as a camp by the Union for Reform Judaism.

Mauch Chunk

Not an ice cream flavor named after the former manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, "Mauch Chunk" was the former name of the borough now officially known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, in honor of the star of the 1912 Olympics, whose actual connection to the town was in fact remote. No doubt wanting to shed its homely name (which is said to mean "Bear Mountain" in Lenape) was a factor in the change, as was the desire to bring in the tourist trade by cutting a deal with Thorpe's widow to obtain his remains. The borough has also been promoted as "the Switzerland of America."

Mauch Chunk's early renown rested on the coal that could be mined from the nearby mountains and shipped via the Lehigh and Delaware rivers into Philadelphia, and on the ingenious switchback railway constructed to bring the coal down to the river. When the railway outlived its original use, it was repurposed as a tourist attraction, serving, in effect, as an ancestor of the modern roller coaster. (See William Brandt's article, "Why Let Coal Have All the Fun?" for a full history.)

The postcard at the top of the page was mailed to Miss Lesley Matcham of "Woodville," Quilter Road, Felixstowe, Suffolk, in May 1906. The image, with its concentric rings that vaguely suggest a very eroded Tower of Babel, is a little misleading, since the "mountain" (a hill, really) appears to be situated in the wilderness, except for the railroad construction wound around its base. In the image below, shot from the side, we see that it in fact faces the town of Mauch Chunk.


The recipient of the lower card was Miss Pearl Oswald of Bridgeport, Wisconsin.

I really did go

The Common from Beacon and Park Sts., Boston, Mass, addressed to Mr. Edward D. Fallon, Long Ridge, Stamford Conn., and postmarked in Boston on July 26, 1907. Inscribed by unknown sender (initials possibly "LMS") with the message "I really did go."

According to the Biennial Report of the State Board of Fisheries and Game published in September 1908, an Edward D. Fallon of the same address applied (and was presumably given permission) to stock 200 fingerling brook trout in nearby Mill Pond Stream.

Overall, I like the mood and composition of this one a lot. The coloring of the sky is drawn from the printer's imagination, of course, but judging by the shadows of the two closest figures (if they're not artificial as well) it does appear to be late afternoon. As there's no snow and no leaves on the trees bordering the central pathway (nor on the ground), it might be early Spring. The strolling figures are just dark silhouettes.

Christ Church, Boston

Applying glitter to postcards by hand would have been a labor-intensive process for the printer, but there was a vogue for them, at least until mail handlers reportedly began complaining that the grit cut their hands. This image of a Boston landmark also known as the Old North Church, has received a liberal, if crude, sprinkling.

Newton Upper Falls

Dear Aunt Harriet

Hope this your birthday finds you well and happy with many more.

Best wishes

Ernest

A group of views from a village within the boundaries of the town of Newton, Massachusetts, a few miles west of Boston. As one might suppose, there is also a Newton Lower Falls, but the town includes Newton Centre, Newton Corner, Newton Highlands, Newtonville, and West Newton as well, along with several villages that don't include the name Newton in any form. The stream is the Charles River.

The images below are not identical, though they both originated from the same photographic negative. If you look carefully there are differences in coloring and cropping, which are most evident along the bottom border and in the bushes in the left and right foreground.


Do you have anything like this in Seattle

Ed.