Yorktown

By Linda G. Cooper, Adele Hobby, John Tegeder and Susan Hack-Lane

Yorktown is one of the northernmost towns in Westchester County. This volume of vintage postcards draws from a time when the railroad was a predominant fixture in the community and travelers flocked to summer hotels and lakeside bungalow colonies. Often thought of as ephemera, something to be used and thrown away, postcard images have proven over time to be a valuable document of a time and place. For those who were visitors and those who received postcards, these striking images capture the past in terms of Yorktown s architecture, entertainment, commerce, and community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9781439635803

Linda G. Cooper

Yorktown draws primarily from the collection of the Yorktown Museum, as well as two major collectors within the Taconic Postcard Club. Town supervisor Linda G. Cooper coauthored Yorktown in the Images of America series. For this volume, she partnered with Yorktown Museum assistant curator Adele Hobby, Yorktown director of planning John Tegeder, and Susan Hack-Lane, the president of both the Friends of the Yorktown Museum and the Taconic Postcard Club, to gather and write material for this book. It is their hope that this volume of postcard images will encourage an interest in Yorktown�s heritage and place in history.

Book preview

future.

INTRODUCTION

Often thought of as ephemera or something to be used and thrown away, postcard images have proven over time to be valuable documentation of a time and place. Family photographs or museum-quality photographs do not end up in the hands of the masses; postcards do. They are an interesting snapshot of the time and its culture, and although long considered irrelevant for historical purposes, postcards are now recognized as a valuable primary source for museums, archives, and research.

Many of the postcards assembled in this volume reflect a time when Yorktown was defined by the railroad. Others reflect a shift away from the rail to a reliance on the automobile. The postcards document significant changes in the Yorktown community by recording the creation of the New York City water supply system, the days of the great hotels, IBM’s decision to place its largest research facility in our town, and the town growth as many people chose to live here. Scenes that have changed are memorialized in these cards. One can pick out shifts in a road; storefronts that are there one year and not another; and churches, post offices, schools, and firehouses that have changed from their original structures.

Located in New York’s northern Westchester County, Yorktown’s residents, shopkeepers, vacationers, farmers, and clergy all shared an interest in the pressures that were changing the community. Postcards reflected a view of the present at any given time. While Yorktown was to keep its agricultural orientation until the end of World War II, the earlier cards show the shift from farms to suburban development.

In the 19th century, the center of town moved from Crompond Corners (Routes 202 and 132) to the area around the railroad in Yorktown Heights. Not long after, the commercial area shifted again from one side of the tracks to the other. Along with these changes and growth, the pastoral qualities of Yorktown led to an influx of summer residents in the early to mid-20th century.

Around Lake Mohegan, summer colonies supplanted farms and drew vacationers from far and wide, many of whom eventually converted their summer bungalows to year-round housing. The population declined here in the early 1900s, one of the only times in our history that it did so, as young people fled to the cities for work. One of the first planned neighborhoods in town grew in this era with the homes along Paine, Summit, and Central Streets, known as the Yorktown Heights Depot Plaza Development.

Postcards had their beginnings as an efficient and inexpensive advertising tool as early as 1869. Once sanctioned with the approval of the postal services here and abroad, businesses were able to send customers a quick and easy reminder of their product line. Those scarce early advertising cards, now known as pioneer cards, are appreciated for the graphics used in promoting companies and products.

Early illustrated picture postcards in Germany were referred to as Gruss Aus cards, meaning Greetings From, and used chromolithography to produce their pictorial images. For France, the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1898 was justification for a souvenir postcard, particularly with a cancellation from the top of the tower. In the United States, picture postcards got their start at the Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Greeting cards for birthdays and holidays, views of landmarks, and beautifully illustrated cards by well-known artists of the day were all pictured on the face of a postcard.

In the early days of postcard popularity, photographers were sent to large cities and small towns, sometimes using the rail line as their guide. Local merchants or pharmacists selected the views that they wanted, and the images would be sent for production. Until the rise in tariffs, change in personal taste, and the impending war, printing was primarily done in Germany, taking advantage of the superiority of Germany’s printing equipment. Cards were sent back to the United States and sold here at pharmacies, general stores, and photography studios.

Many towns had their own local photographer who took pictures of town activities and street scenes with such clarity that signs could be read down the entire row of stores. While many cards were saved as souvenirs (such as cards of the most popular attractions of that area), a local photographer could also capture a special event or be commissioned to photograph a home or a family in a setting of their own choosing. These pictures would then be developed in limited quantities on postcard stock that clearly identified them as real-photo postcards, which are today an area of collecting that is highly prized.

Postcards evolved, and collectors promoted the parlor postcard album as the coffee-table book of its time. The British publisher Raphael Tuck and Sons helped ensure this when it offered monetary prizes to those who received the most postcards. The golden age of the postcard from the early 1900s to 1914 is when the greatest variety, quality, and quantity of postcards were produced.

Some expression of wish you were here has been the common message read over the past 100 years. However, there is no limit to the remarks recorded on postcards. For privacy, codes were devised, but when decrypted, these cards often stated the standard sentiment of please write.

The postcards used throughout this book draw primarily from the collection of the Yorktown Museum as well as two major collections of Taconic Postcard Club members. Other collectors have contributed cards as well. As you read through each chapter note that the cards shown are from the museum’s collection unless otherwise noted.

Reviews for Yorktown

[Emile Menasche · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was several notches better than others I've read in this series. I grew up in Yorktown and enjoyed the clarity and lack of sentimentality. Started out planning to look at a few pictures and ended up reading the whole thing in a sitting.