John Crombie Cochrane (1835-1887), a native of New Boston, New Hampshire, trained to be an architect in Nashua. He began his architectural career in 1856 with a brief stint in Davenport, Iowa, before moving to Chicago to work as a draftsman in the office of architect Edward J. Burling. Because of stagnant work due to the Panic of 1857, Cochrane left Chicago and established an office in St. Louis. In 1864 he moved to Chicago and partnered with George O. Garnsey. He served as vice president of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1873. Cochrane died in Chicago on December 12, 1887.[1] Among Cochrane’s notable projects, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are Cook County Hospital in Chicago; Livingston County Courthouse in Pontiac, Illinois; Marshall County Courthouse in Marshalltown, Iowa; and the Ivory Quinby House in Monmouth, Illinois. Cochrane is tied to the design of two state capitol buildings, Illinois and Iowa. The Illinois state capitol began construction in 1868, and the Iowa state capitol followed in 1871. |
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My husband's late grandfather served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. The ship he served abroad made port in Morocco, and he collected many postcards of Casablanca, Rabat, and other cities. We inherited the album he compiled, but it doesn't really hold any sentimental value to us. (Don't worry; I'm big into genealogy, and we have tons of family photos and records that are definitely staying with us!) So these Moroccan postcards are looking for a new home through Postcardigans @ Etsy. I always research some information about the image on postcards. First and foremost, I'm a historical research geek--I have a masters degree in history, so there can never be too much research. Besides, it's fun to find and share tidbits of information. Secondly, it's good for Google; they like unique descriptions full of keywords. But these postcards are a challenge to research because of the history of Morocco. Bringhurst Park in Alexandria, Louisiana is home to two of the city’s oldest recreational institutions: Bringhurst Golf Course and the Alexandria Zoo. Adjacent is Bringhurst Field, built in 1933. At one point, the park was also home to a small amusement park—I remember visiting in the mid-1980s for my birthday one year. I grew up about an hour from Alexandria, so I made many visits to the zoo as a kid. Bringhurst Park is named for Robert Wilton Bringhurst, Sr. Born December 13, 1840 in Alexandria to Augustus L. Bringhurst and Maria Louise Water Bringhurst, R.W. received a degree in civil engineering from Union College in Schenectady, New York in 1861. He served in the Confederate Army as an engineer. After the war, he was commissioned civil engineer and surveyor of Rapides Parish. R.W. retired from this position after thirty years. He then founded the Bringhurst Land and Real Estate Agency.[1] His son Robert W. Bringhurst, Jr. continued the family’s influence on the development of Alexandria. Robert served as a city alderman from 1907 to 1909 and commissioner of streets and parks from 1917 to 1949. The year before Robert took office, a municipal was established in Alexandria. During his tenure, City Park gained many modern civic amenities including a zoo, nine-hole golf course, and baseball stadium.[2] In 1905 Abbot Kinney founded the resort town of Venice, California. Kinney was born to a well-appointed family, but made millions as part of the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company. After traveling the world, Kinney found himself stuck in California during a snowstorm. He ventured down to a health resort in southern California where he found his asthmatic symptoms alleviated. Kinney purchased 550 acres of land, which he named Kinneloa, and stayed.^1 Kinney sought to create a resort center near Los Angeles. He opened Venice of America on July 4, 1905, which fit Kinney's vision of "an ideal city..partly for study, partly for recreation, and partly for health."^2 The town featured an amusement area and homes along canals (instead of streets, as this was just before automobile ownership took off) as in Venice, Italy.^3 Starting in the 1880s, streetcars became popular forms of mass transportation in the United States. Dating as early as the 1840s, omnibuses pulled by horses or mules had operated in cities such as New York and Boston. Local rail-based transport gradually gained in popularity, and by the late nineteenth century companies in cities across the country were clamoring to build their own systems. The 1890s saw the rise of electric streetcars. However, Abbot Kinney looked to a more unusual form of public transportation for Venice--the miniature railway. Kinney contacted John J. Coit, who had built a miniature railway in what is now Lincoln Park in Los Angeles. A maintenance facility was constructed on Lake Avenue (today Venice Boulevard at Abbot Kinney Boulevard). The first engine, a Prairie 2-6-2 oil burning engine at a cost of $4510 along with five cars sitting twelve passengers each, began service on July 30, 1905. Cost to ride the railway was five cents, same as for a streetcar line.^4 The #2 engine pictured above was ordered due to the popularity of the line. Coit closed his own line in Los Angeles and brought over the 2-6-0 locomotive, which was slightly smaller than the #1 engine, and ordered five additional passenger cars. The Venice Miniature Railway operated for twenty years. On February 13, 1925, the railway was closed in response to a planned Venice city ordinance to ban the operation of miniature railways in city streets.^5 1--"Abbot Kinney," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbot_Kinney. 2--Tom Moran, "In Kinney's Own Words," Venice Historical Society Journal (March/April 2004), www.veniceofamerica.org/pdf/mar_apr_2004_newsletter.pdf. 3--"Canals Venice," promotional flyer, 1920, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Canal_Historic_District#/media/File:Canals_Venice_of_America_promotional_flyer_circa_1920_side_2.png. 4--Jeffrey Stanton, "Venice Miniature Railroad," April 6, 1998, http://www.westland.net/venicehistory/articles/rail.htm. 5--Stanton. While I love running my Etsy shop, it is only a hobby for me. Primarily, I stay home with my toddler and watch waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much Thomas the Tank Engine, which is all good--I watched it as a kid! (I'm not really that young, but the show has been on since the mid 1980s) I also am a historic preservation consultant through my business SVM Historical Consulting. I've written about many different historic properties in North Carolina, with most of them in Mecklenburg County. A project I just finished up is about a cotton gin in the northern Mecklenburg County town of Cornelius. In fact, it’s the only one from the early twentieth century remaining in the county out of about 15 or so that once existed. The report I wrote will be part of its presentation to become a local historic landmark. I write these blog entries because I’m inspired by postcards I own. In this case, the postcard pictured to the left is one that I came across in my research. This postcard features Shaw’s Cotton Gin in Wagram, North Carolina. Farmers and their mule-drawn wagons loaded with loose cotton are waiting to have their cotton ginned. Each wagon pulls onto the scale, which is under the roof of that small outbuilding, to be weighed. Afterwards, the wagon will go over to the cotton gin, where the loose cotton will be suctioned out of the wagon into the ginning system. The results of ginning are the bales of cotton on the left side of the image. stcards in gas stations are still a common sight today. While postcards may have been sold in hotel lobbies and other shops, they were not present in gas and service stations until, well, these stations actually existed in the mid-1900s. First, a little background about the history of tourism in the United States, which is longer than you may realize. Starting in the 1820s, popular tourist destinations included the spa resorts and hot springs at Saratoga Springs, New York and Niagara Falls—the Hudson River Valley was a popular area. The extended trip to Europe enjoyed by the upper classes, but tourism in upstate New York was accessible to the middle class of merchants and landowners. The Hudson River School of art arose, and famed American artists such as Thomas Cole painted landscapes that the masses yearned to behold for themselves. Stagecoach routes, canals, and steamships provided passage for the swarms of tourists to flock to these locales.[1] For obvious reasons, the American Civil War and Reconstruction put a damper upon tourism. But the industry once again returned in the 1870s and 1880s with the establishment of the national parks at Yosemite and Yellowstone. The expansion of railroads certainly contributed to the expanding movement of tourists throughout the country, and the wide availability of the automobile by the mid-1910s only served to continue that growth.[2] Surprisingly, the Great Depression did little to impede the growth of tourism; tourism spending as a percentage of national income increased from 2.96% in the 1920s to 4.37% in 1935.[3]
Driving tours of Hollywood stars' homes has been a robust industry, sharing its origins with the birth of the film industry. Starline, one of the more prominent touring services, dates back to 1935. The home of actress Claudette Colbert in Holmby Hills was a regular stop on these tours.
Built in 1935 by architect Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright), the house was styled as a Hollywood Baroque "White Mansion" on a hill. The extensive estate was surrounded by gardens. While the property included tennis courts, missing was the prototypical swimming pool. Colbert and her husband Dr. Joel Pressman, a throat surgeon at UCLA, lived in the home until 1963, when they sold it. This postcard is available in my Etsy shop, Postcardigans. Check out it and other vintage postcards I have collected over the years! When I think of riding and racing an ostrich, the first thing that comes to mind is the scene from the movie The Swiss Family Robinson where the sons race ostriches during their day of festivities. But did you know that ostrich racing was a major tourist attraction around the turn of the twentieth century? Neither did I! In 1898 Charles D. Fraser opened Jacksonville, Florida's first amusement park--the Florida Ostrich Farm. Patrons could takes rides and watch ostrich races. Oliver W. Jr. was the amusement park's famed attraction; his driver is seated in a small carriage known as a sulky. The park was renamed the New Ostrich Farm, Amusement Park and Zoo and moved from the Fairfield neighborhood near downtown Jacksonville to Phoenix Park north of downtown in 1912. Streetcars serviced the amusement park along the Talleyrand Avenue line. Phoenix Park hosted the amusement park for four short years, when New Ostrich Farm merged with Alligator Joe's Florida Alligator Farm, another animal-centric amusement park, in 1916. The newly joined amusements parks became Southland Amusement Park and relocated to across the St. Johns River to South Jacksonville near the former Dixieland (nicknamed the Coney Island of the South) amusement park. Judging from a 1940s aerial image of South Jacksonville (now San Marco) found here, the amusement park may have operated into that decade. But no definitive date of closure for the Southland Amusement Park may be found. Additionally, no comprehensive history of the park has been written at this time. Today, Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, both in Orlando, are the most notable Florida amusement parks. But a century ago, crowds didn't flock to visit a mouse, duck, or dog, but rather racing ostriches. To see more postcards about the Florida Ostrich Farm, check out this collection from the Jacksonville Public Library. Check out my shop for more great vintage postcard finds! Source Andrew Bachmann and Maria E. Mediavilla, Jacksonville Revisited (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007): 113-116. Debra Webb Rogers, San Marco (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010): 38-44. Tazewell, Virginia, is located in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia. This vintage postcard dates to 1941 and shows a view of the eastern part of the town of approximately 2,000 people.
I posted a snapshot of this postcard to Instagram (@postcardigans) today of a postcard I previously sold. Typically, I include a historical fact about the postcard image. Today's fact about Tazewell hits upon a special subject for me: public transportation. I wrote my M.A. in history thesis about public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina, specifically the streetcar era. So imagine my delight when I learned that little Tazewell was once home to streetcars. Horse- or mule-drawn trolleys came to Tazewell in 1892. Most cities with streetcars had populations of at least 20,000 people, but Tazewell was a tenth of that size. In 1904 electric streetcars began running in the town. The primary route of the streetcar was to the town depot. The widespread acceptance of automobiles lead to the decline of the system, however, and in 1933 the streetcars were discontinued. References History, Tazewell Train Station, http://trainstation.townoftazewell.org/history/, accessed February 6, 2015. History, Town of Tazewell, http://www.townoftazewell.org/history/, accessed February 6, 2015. Louise B. Leslie and Terry W. Mullins, eds, Tazewell (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006), 19. The village of Gretna Green in Scotland, snuggled against the border with England, is a famed destination for runaway weddings. Beginning with Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act in 1754 and age restrictions upon marriage, couples were able to easily runaway to Scotland to be married with the completion of a toll road from England that ran to the village. Today, we would shudder at the thought, but at the time Scotland allowed marriages between males at least 14 years old and females at least 12 years old. Yikes! Today, Gretna Green remains a destination for eloping couples. Elkton, Maryland, found itself in a similar coincidental geographic location as Gretna Green. When many northern states began restricting the age of marital consent in the 1910s and 1920s, couples looked to find a way around the laws. Maryland did not have the same age constraints, so nearby Elkton became a popular destination for quick marriages. By 1938, however, the state tired of its infamous reputation and passed its own restrictive marriage laws. Still, Elkton remained the "Gretna Green of the West" until the emergence of Las Vegas as a popular elopement destination. Today, Elkton still has one chapel, and couples flock to the town, though in smaller numbers. The Wikipedia articles for Gretna Green and Elkton contain good sources. Also, check out this blog article about Elkton. |