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Books: by Title: Postcard Views
A Walk Down Main Street Buffalo, New York, circa 1910

For a brief moment in time, the picture postcard was the most cherished communication in the United States. In 1907, the U.S. government allowed the back of a postcard to be divided: right half for the address, left half for a short message. That left the entire front of the card to be devoted to beautiful, evocative full-color photographs. Now families held on to the wonderful pictures with the messages from far away, and kept them in books for guests to peruse. But since the best postcards were colorized in Germany, the craze hit a roadblock when World War One began.

Joseph Bieron and Paul McCarthy have selected 60 vintage postcards from this golden era to illustrate Main Street, Buffalo, at a time when the city also was enjoying a golden age of its own.

Each postcard has its own story to tell:

The Buffalo Harbor was a major transportation hub in Buffalo. Grain elevators lined the banks of the Buffalo River, which saw heavy water traffic, including tug boats and lake freighters. At the turn of the twentieth century, one could stand at the foot of Main Street and see the Erie Canal, lake steamers and freighters, railroads and electric streetcars, and horse-drawn carriages. The foot of Main Street was unique in Buffalo as the point at which all forms of transportation converged: the Erie Canal met up with lake steamers and freighters, railroads, and the city transport of horse cars or streetcars. The crowd pictured on the postcard at the foot of Main Street on the Buffalo River is waiting to board the Americana, an excursion boat to Crystal Beach. The postmark on the back of this card indicates that the picture was taken prior to 1912.

The book is organized into seven chapters, including special sections about the city's shopping district, Shelton Square Lower Main Street and Lafayette Square. Maps of the day help pinpoint the locations pictured in each one of the remarkable postcards.

ISBN: 978-0-9788476-4-7
$17.95

Also Recommended:
Crystal Beach: The Good Old Days	Victorian Buffalo

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