MacArthur Causeway, Then and Now

The white border postcard above shows the MacArthur Causeway connecting Miami and Miami Beach, in its early days.  Construction on the causeway started in 1917 and was finished in 1920.  It was originally called the "County Causeway" and it was built to replace a deteriorating wooden bridge to the north which has since become the Venetian Causeway.

One of the mysteries of old postcards is determining when they were actually published.  In this case, it's a "white border" postcard, and those were published between 1915 and 1930.  Since we know that the causeway was finished in 1920, that narrows down the card to 1920-1930.  Another clue can be found by comparing the postcard to today's Google Earth view from the same vantage point, which can be seen below.  At the far end of the causeway there is an additional island now that is not in the original view.  This is Watson Island, which was build from reclaimed land surrounding the western end of the roadway.  Watson Island was completed in 1926, so now we know that the postcard dates between 1920 to 1926.  

It's interesting to see all the development that has taken place since the 20's.  The residential islands to the "right" (really the north) of the causeway are completely developed with high end homes, and there are additional islands built on the other side.  You can also see the significant high rise developments all the way up and down the coast (in the foreground).  

All in all, I'd rather be there today than in New England, where the high temperature for today in my Connecticut town is supposed to be 14 degrees!

The Willow Grove Diner Journey

This is one of my favorite diner postcards, as it shows the employees and customers in a relatively natural unposed scene.  It's a linen card of the the Willow Grove Diner, when it was in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.  It was at the intersection of Routes 611 and 263, a site now occupied by a Burger King.  According to the current owners, the diner was built in 1948 by the Fodero Dining Car Company and operated there until the early 1960's.  In 1963, new owners moved it to a vacant lot in New Jersey, but never re-opened it.

In 1996, a new owner came along -- a diner aficionado with a vision -- and he disassembled it piece by piece and shipped it to Bainbridge Island, Washington, a mere 2,800 miles away.  Re-opened as the Blue Water Diner, it was visited by Guy Fieri from the Food Network.  Since then, it has been also named the Big Star Diner and the Madison Diner, and its current owners continue to operate it in a spirit consistent with its long history and even longer journey.

Here's a shot of the exterior in its current location:

On the Border

This week we're on the border....the border between Canada and the United States, that is!  We're in Edmundston, New Brunswick.  Edmundston boasts about 16,000 people, over 95% of  whom are francophone.  The city is right across the border from Madawaska, Maine, USA.  You can't get much further north than this in Maine (only a spot called Estcourt Station, ME is further north, by about 6 degrees of latitude).  Edmundston and Madawaska are tightly linked together by the paper industry -- they make paper pulp in a factory in Edmundston and then pipe the liquified pulp slurry through a mile-long high pressure pipeline across the border into Madawaska, where fine grade paper is made from the slurry.  

This postcard from the 50's/60's shows the Belair Restaurant in Edmundston, which apparently hosted folks at its laundromat as well as as in its dining room.   The back of the card boasted that its "Econowash" had 25 washers and 16 dryers, and they served "Food and Chinese Food."

Not letting go of a good location, the Belair is still there today on Google Earth, but it looks like you can only eat there, not do the wash!  I guess times have changed.

Here's the Church, Here's The Steeple

Some postcards have great messages on them, and the messages contain great mysteries.  The subject of this mystery is this card of Lewiston, Maine.  It's postmarked 1909, and it's mailed to Miss Helen Libby of Biddeford.  The message on the front is written by a man who worked on the steeple of the church in the picture.  The text reads: "I help build this steeple over last fall, way to the top of it.  Where the x is is the shop where I work."   You can see an "x" on a low brick building a few streets behind the church.   Additionally, the church steeple is marked with an "x" and labelled "180 ft." 

The mystery?  What church is this, is it still there, and does it have an interesting history?  That's what I set out to discover.

The first order of business is to locate the church.  There's no church that looks exactly like it using Google Earth, so maybe it no longer exists?  A clue to its location is the light colored building in the foreground.  I have other postcards of Lewiston, so I took a look and found several of a building with suspiciously similar porticos, and the same number of windows per floor between the cards.  This is the newest one, postmarked in 1960:

Although the chimneys seem to be gone, and there's a new cornice, these cards are of the same building.  And the building according to these cards is the DeWitt Hotel.  The chrome version above gives the address as 40 Pine Street.  Great, now all I have to do is go back to Google Earth and take a look at that address today.  And the answer is:  no DeWitt Hotel building and no Church on Pine Street:

There's a flat-roofed office building where the DeWitt was, and there's a parking lot and a nondescript building where the church was.  

So, what church was it, and what happened to it?  More internet research turned up interesting additional clues, and now that I had the street, I quickly discovered that it was the Pine St. Congregational Church.  It was built in 1866.  I also found this photograph below, which was captioned  "Maintenance on the Pine St Church Steeple," but I think this is earlier than 1909, because the building closer to us in this photograph looks older than the one with the mansard roof in the postcard above.  Another mystery for another day (or else I'll never complete this post)!

OK, when did the Pine St. Congregational Church disappear, and why?  After a lot more searching, I found the following one sentence in the "City Locals" section of the Lewiston Evening Journal, July 11, 1940.  Between an item about a city clerk testifying in a court case and an item about Mrs. Gauvin recuperating from an illness and now "out of danger," is our clue: "The Hub Wrecking Co. of Boston began yesterday the razing of the 75 year old Pine Street Congregational Church.  A First National Stores super market will be erected on the site."

The following day, the newspaper had this picture, but no other explanation.  The workmen were demolishing the very structure that our postcard sender helped to maintain over 30 years earlier.

In the Fall of 1940, the other shoe dropped with a full page ad in the newspaper announcing the opening of the new store:

More research uncovered several other facts about this address and the demise of the church.  A good source for church history, believe it or not, is information about the organs in churches, many of which are documented in several databases.  I learned the reason for the abandonment of the Pine St. Church building from one such database, here: http://www.quimbypipeorgans.com/completed/rebuilt/st-john-s-episcopal-church-2006.  It turns out that the reason for the demolition of the church was due to the merger of the church with the Universalist Church in town, becoming the Federated Church of Lewiston in a different location.

As for the organ, it was an E. & G. G. Hook, model Opus 326, installed in the church in 1866 and then electrified in 1923.  The website database.organsociety.org notes that the organ was saved and sold for $850 to a church in Biddeford, ME.  Now, it's in Quincy, Illinois. There will be a quiz.

 The story of this location does not end with the First National Super Market.  In 1958, they built a new one a half mile away, knocking down additional buildings to have parking for 200 cars.  And the old location?  Now, it's a very banal brick building, used by a youth social services agency, but with a "for lease" sign in the window.

Progress?  You be the judge!  Here's my attempt, through the magic of photoshop, to re-insert the old church over the current landscape, with the steeple proudly worked on by an anonymous postcard sender of 1909:

The "Flagship" of Holiday Inns

This Holiday Inn on 57th St. in New York City is advertised as the "flagship" of Holiday Inns, but I'm not sure why.  Sure, it's got a lot of rooms, and it's in the biggest city where "The World's Innkeeper" has inns, but I don't think it was that awesome.

I'm including the card as a tip 'o the hat to a best friend from high school, with whom I made a trip to NYC for the first time in 1980.  We had a great time, leaving on a 3:00am Greyhound bus from Portland, ME, for the long weekend.  After a few years, we drifted apart, but managed to reconnect last weekend for dinner after about 30 years.  Somewhat disappointed in ourselves for letting so much time slip by, I think we'll keep in better touch now!

It's still there today as a Holiday Inn, and the buildings that were there on either side are still there, although they didn't show up in the idealized postcard illustration above!

Molly's Teenage Store

Molly's Children and Teenage Store was a fixture on Mission St. in San Francisco sometime in the late 50's, early 60's judging by the postcard above.  The storefront, which must have been impossible not to see,  was a peppermint-striped beaut.  The back of the postcard reads:

Molly's Children's Discount House.  2947 Mission St., Between 25th and 26th Sts. on Mission St.  BankAmericard.  open Friday nights until 9 p.m.  Special Sale for the New Baby.  Infant Seats.  Curity Diapers.  Curity Shirts.  Curity Gowns.  Even Flow Bottles.  Delux Reclining Stroller.  High Chairs.  6 Year Crib & Mattress

It's always interesting to look and see if the place still exists (thanks, Google Earth!), and here we see that the storefront (two, actually) is still there, stripes gone AWOL.  When Google drove by, the buildings housed a grocery and Cybermania store.  Take a close look, however, and you can see the original bones of the building.  The windows, the signage, the door to the alleyway on the right -- even the cornice on the left-hand building is still intact.  What do you like better?  The subtle earth tones, or the stripes?

Hartford, CT

Hartford, Connecticut, back in the days of the linen postcard. A lot has happened since this bucolic view existed -- a waterfront park including an amphitheater and stage has been added, along with a large convention center and science museum. The white Traveler's tower and adjacent brick buildings provide the continuity between these two views.