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Wish You Were Here

A few years ago while visiting friends in Chicago, I stopped in a small thrift store where I stumbled across a box filled with hundreds of old, used postcards whose dates ranged from the 1900s through the 1960s. Of all the antique items in the shop, I found these worn postcards the most fascinating. While my friends quickly moved from item to item about the store I sat and ran my fingers over the bent corners, faded images, and yellowed paper. I squinted as I tried to read the scrawled cursive messages on the backs. These postcards, which by nature of the format were designed to be a quick, brief, snapshot spoke volumes to me. They told the story of destinations which surely no longer look the same today, of the lost art of letter writing, and how there was once a time when the only information needed to ensure your letter reached its recipient was their name, city, and state.

I selected a few favorites, each for their own special reasons and made, what was to me, a purchase of insurmountable value. When I returned home, I scanned the cards, front and back and posted them on my Flickr site to share with my friends. I attempted to translate the handwriting on the backs and added the messages as typed captions. I took comfort knowing that should anything happen to them in their physical form, I could continue to reference them later. I imagined what the original sender would think, knowing someone was sharing their personal, private messages with the world.

I was recently reminded of my old postcard collection while watching the Blueprint America documentary Beyond the Motor City, about transportation in Detroit. Towards the beginning of the documentary, University of Michigan Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning Robert Fishman, stated "For a long time I have been collecting postcards of Detroit in its great era, that's because postcards show a city at its best. And I wanted to see the city when people really appreciated it, when they loved it, when it had a real grandeur and sense of its own importance." As he compared his dated postcards of Detroit to the buildings in their current state I couldn't help but note the parallel between how people nostalgically talk about the days of letter writing to the way my grandparents' generation reminisce about Detroit in the 1940s.

I am not alone in my passion for collecting postcards. Deltiology, the formal name given to the hobby of collecting postcards, is widely regarded to be one of the three most common collecting hobbies in the world, only behind coins and stamps. Commercial postcards in the United States were made legal by Congress in 1889 making the history of mailing postcards one hundred and twenty-one years old.

This long history has provided deltiologists with an enormous range of more specific subjects to choose to collect. Some, like Fishman, collect postcards of a particular city. Others collect a particular illustration, photographic, or printing style, or cards from a certain time period.

Fishman has a productive motive behind his collection: "I wanted to have a counter vision to put in place of what was right in front of my eyes which was the ruins, the decay, the failure. If you only see the failure you're not seeing the real history and you're not seeing the real future. To have a future you have to really understand what these places stood for, what they achieved, so that you might be able to imagine what they can become again."

The postal industry, in many ways like Detroit, has struggled to keep up with the modern world. Since the digital boom the industry has been dwindling and with it printed media in general. Earlier this year, due to lack of use there were discussions of discontinuing Saturday mail delivery. Not only has the prevalence of Internet communication slowed business for the postal service, it has altered the content of the messages being sent. It's difficult to imagine a girl in 1924 writing her mother on the back of a postcard from her trip abroad, only to update her on what time she brushed her teeth or how the season finale of her favorite show ended. Additionally, the frequency with which we communicate has drastically increased. I barely have interest in reading majority my friend's Facebook statuses and "tweets" that update every few seconds, let alone any desire to catalog them to reference again in fifty years. The fact that these postcards are able to be in my possession today is evidence that they were of value to someone, at some point, who felt the need to cherish and save them. I can say with certainty that no stranger will want to purchase my day-to-day Emails in a thrift shop in the future.

During the past few years since the fall of the Big Three the media have focused their lens on Detroit. Initially I was optimistic about the attention but as story after story centered only on the negative aspects of the city while offering no solutions or suggestions for improvement I began to go numb to it. Every week I turn on the radio to yet another story about Detroit's corrupt politicians, failing schools, foreclosed homes, and abandoned factories. The over-saturation of coverage on these topics has lead many to indifference. Just like Facebook statuses, reporting on Detroit's state has become void of meaning.

When I visit my former professors at the newly remolded GM design center which is now home to the College for Creative Studies, or attend a lecture at the MOCAD, I am reminded of all of the wonderful places that exist in Detroit today which have been built or renovated in the past decade. They never had the opportunity to appear in Fishman's postcard collection, for they did not exist in the 1940s. These places are representative of the new direction our city is headed in, of our future. They are proof that despite what the national media continually portrays, Detroit boasts many new and modern cultural amenities, educational facilities, and businesses -- all of which would look beautiful on the front of a postcard.

Written by Colleen Hill

Posted by detroit in Design Lifestyle  |  October 21, 2010