Columbus, Georgia in Vintage Postcards

By Kenneth H. Thomas Jr.

Founded in 1828 as a planned city by the Georgia Legislature, Columbus prospered due to its location on the Chattahoochee River. Industry sprang up along the shores of the Chattahoochee and shaped Columbus s identity as one of Georgia s premier cities. Today a thriving metropolis, it is the Columbus of yesteryear that is illuminated within these pages. Early postcard views reflect the city from around 1905 to 1942, showcasing many of its businesses, neighborhoods, and parks. Included are places virtually unknown to citizens today the Bell Tower, the City Market, North Highlands Park, and Wildwood Park as well as those that were landmarks a century ago and landmarks still: the Iron Bank, the Springer Opera House, the Union Depot, the YMCA, and Fort Benning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781439610947

Kenneth H. Thomas Jr.

Historian and genealogist Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., a native of Columbus, has selected over 200 images from his own collection, other private collections, and that of the Historic Columbus Foundation, the co-sponsors of this book. In Columbus, Georgia in Vintage Postcards, Thomas offers a lovingly crafted tribute to the people and places of his hometown.

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INTRODUCTION

Columbus, Georgia, was founded in 1828—a planned city on Georgia’s westernmost frontier. In this book I have selected and arranged postcards to present the city much like the early postcard distributors did.

This book is arranged as a tour of the city, beginning with cards that link to the Chattahoochee River. In Columbus, Broad Street/Broadway and the avenues are on a north-south axis, with the streets on an eastwest axis. The book proceeds with each chapter representing a different section of town. In the last chapter, I have placed cards that did not fit elsewhere or reflected special events. While the primary scope of the book is from 1905 to 1942, I have sometimes jumped past the latter date to include a card or an event. I have also used the historic names of streets rather than reflecting any recent name changes. I have most often used Broad Street, as found on the earlier cards, rather than Broadway—its official name since about 1928.

Collecting postcards of my hometown, where some of my ancestors arrived in 1836, has long been a favorite hobby of mine. Postcards provide an insight into the past and can suggest many points of discussion. I used my collection many times to talk about early twentieth century Columbus with my grandmother, Helen Russell Brooks, before her death in 1993. It is interesting that the earliest Columbus scenes to appear on postcards coincided with the year and month of her birth, August 1905, so there were many scenes on postcards that she could not recall. Hopefully this book will help others start discussions with their relatives about Columbus in earlier years.

Postcards do not provide a comprehensive history of an area, and certainly those in this book do not attempt to either. One can only print what exists and what one can find. These cards provide a marketdriven look at a city. Picture postcards were published and sold; they were rarely distributed free unless they were business advertisement cards. The Columbus postcards were not issued by a government agency or by the early Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade, as far as we know. These cards for the most part show the city at its best—its beautiful tree-lined streets, community landmark buildings, picturesque parks, and in the case of locally generated real photo cards, some disasters. I have limited this book to picture postcards, some real photo postcards, and no family photo postcards. Columbus has an incredible wealth of photographs of the city and its people, many of which have appeared in other local books. Postcards represent a special look at a city, and that is the direction I chose to take in this book.

The publishing of view or picture postcards became a national phenomenon in the early twentieth century in the United States, and so it was when the craze hit Columbus in 1905. The social editor of the Enquirer-Sun on August 20, 1905, lamented the lack of any picture postals of Columbus. Ten days later, on August 30, we find the earliest postmarked view card in this book. While the photographs that were used could have been taken locally, most often a national postcard publisher would have had them made. Frequently several different postcard companies used the same view over a number of years. Postcards were usually printed by a major national postcard company and then imprinted with the name of the local distributor who ordered the cards. Others were handled totally at the local level.

In Columbus the S.H. Kress Company, a national five-and-dime store chain, as well as several local businesses, distributed the first postcards that appeared between 1905 and 1908. Carl Schomburg, jewelers, and the W.A. White Company, a news and postcards business, had cards printed and they were listed on them as distributors. The White Company and many other distributors had cards printed in Germany, where the finest cards were published until World War I began in 1914. Another early local distributor was J.N. Pease and Company, book dealer and stationer. That company’s role ended with the death of Mr. Pease in 1907. The Columbian Book Store, operated by Charles Pitchford, was another early distributor. Among these, only the White Company advertised in the city directories as early as 1908 that they sold postcards. They arranged for the printing and then sold postcards as late as the 1950s, if not later. Other local firms that later produced or issued cards include Nic Martiniere, Boyce Brothers, and the Columbus Office Supply Company.

There is no complete collection of Columbus postcards. A major collection of historical and archival material about the city and the region is currently housed in the Chattahoochee Valley Historical Collections in the Archives at the Columbus State University (formerly Columbus College) Library. There is a great need for more visibility for this collection, which we hope will be part of a new citywide archive proposed for a downtown location. Anyone with historical material about Columbus and the area (letters, photographs, journals, scrapbooks, etc.) should consider donating the material to the Columbus State University Collection for permanent retention. Hopefully, as other postcards surface, they can be donated there to start a local postcard collection.

Most of the postcards in this book are from my personal collection, with loans from the Historic Columbus Foundation where several major collections have been donated, and from Mike Helms, a private collector like myself. For those who are not postcard collectors, it is a whole world unto itself. There is a Georgia Postcard Club, which sponsors two large annual postcard shows for buying cards each year in Atlanta, national magazines, and, as