Minneapolis and St. Paul In Vintage Postcards (MN)

by Christopher Clay

During the first half of the 20th century, communication by postcard was an inexpensive and popular means of exchanging travel stories, news, and gossip across the United States. The postcard, for just a few cents, connected friends and loved-ones separated by hundreds of miles. Today, we treasure these little correspondences of yesteryear as unique glimpses into the long-lost places of a long-gone era. Minneapolis and St. Paul in Vintage Postcards captures this historic era of Minnesota's "twin cities" through 200 classic postcard images. Inside will be found views of St. Paul's Hotel Ryan, providing a rare glimpse into a once-famous landmark that no longer stands. A picture of a solitary 1911 automobile traveling along Minneapolis' popular Lake Calhoun Drive will remind us of how one may have gone to-and-fro at the start of the last century. And the scene of a well-dressed Minnesota family at Minnehaha Falls shows us that this site was as popular among tourists in 1908, when the image was taken, as it is today.

Genres: History

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2002

Reviews

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consisting of an assortment of interesting postcard images accompanied by historical tidbits regarding the extant or extinct Twin Cities landmarks they depict, "Minneapolis and St. Paul in Vintage Postcards" provides a really nice glimpse of the area's past. A tad repetitive (a few of the postcards are nearly identical to others included), the scope of the book does not lend itself to a depth of information about either Twin Cities or postcard history, but the author does introduce them, accompanying most postcards with a few factoids about postcard trivia (postcards were often published before new landmarks were actually finished, for instance) or dates when a certain hotel or theater existed. In any case, the postcards chosen present a great way to imagine what things looked like in decades past.